Metro Vancouver Planning

There has also been an us-verse-them thing when it comes to the communities in Metro Vancouver for a long time. Usually it goes the Burrard Peninsula municipalities verse the South of the Fraser municipalities. When it comes to land use planning it usually goes that the people in the South Fraser accuse those on “the other side of the bridge” of trying to limit development for their own gain, while people that “never go over the bridge” accuse the South Fraser of having no other plan but to see every inch of land turned into big box stores, single family homes, and freeways. There is truth to everything, but these arguments seem to be political more than anything else. My favourite one-liner between a South Fraser politician and a Vancouver politician is “How is preserving your ALR and Industrial Land going?” With that background in mind, I want to take a look at what’s new in Metro Vancouver planning.

As you may know, Metro Vancouver is working on updating our regional growth policy. As part of that review, they are looking at tools to play a stronger role in regional planning. Two of the new tools they are looking at are regional zoning and a more accurate mapping system for this new zoning.

Metro Portland, Portland's elected regional government, is involved in land use planning. It looks like Metro Vancouver is basing their regional zoning on the Portland model. Metro Vancouver would like to see an Urban Zone, Industrial Zone, Rural Zone, and Green Zone. Defining and mapping Green Zone Land will be the topic of another post, but having a Green Zone of ALR land and protected areas doesn’t seem to be an issue. Protecting industrial land from business parks and/or residential development doesn’t seem to be an issue either. Of course (almost) everything else would be in the Urban Zone, so that's not much of an issue either. The major issue comes from the proposed rural zone. The rural zone would define a set development standards that would be different from the urban zone. This would basically take away land use planning from the municipalities and place it into the hands of Metro Vancouver. The rural zoning would really only affect communities like Surrey, Langley Township, and Maple Ridge that have rural land that is not in the ALR. This seems unfair. The major fear that is Metro Vancouver could arbitrarily define the areas that are rural and urban, and arbitrarily define what is urban and rural. There is much work to be done, and I’m sure this policy will be refined as it comes closer to completion. I believe that we need to protect open space that is neither ALR nor environmental sensitive, and I’ll be talking about that on my next post.

Next Meeting this Thursday

Our next meeting is this Thursday, March 12th from 7:00pm - 9:00pm in the Township of Langley Municipal Facility: 4th Floor, Nicomekl Meeting Room, 20338 - 65 Avenue.

This month we will be hearing from Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS). LEPS is a non-profit, partnership driven organization founded in 1993, to achieve the mission of "protecting and restoring the natural environment through education, cooperation and action." LEPS works with a diverse variety of partners to achieve common environmental goals focusing on:
-Environmental education and awareness.
-Inventory and mapping of local fisheries and wildlife resources.
-Fisheries and wildlife habitat protection and restoration.
-Watershed stewardship coordination and technical training.

Nichole Marples will provide a one-hour overview presentation of LEPS and what they are doing today here in Langley. If you care about our environment and the local ecosystem, you won't want to miss this FREE event.

Hope to see you there!

Rumour - Improved Service

If this turns out to be true, you heard it first on this blog. Anyway, I've been told that there will be service improvements in April on the bus network in the South Fraser. Of interest was the 502 Langley Centre/Surrey Central bus route. Currently it runs every 10 minutes during peak and every 15min the rest of the day until 9pm. Anyway, I heard that the service may be improving to 7 minutes. This is good, because the buses can get "a bit full". What remains to be seen is how TransLink plans to fund the transit system after they run out of money in the next year or two. Cutting service would not be the way to go. Maybe the province will help out TransLink’s operating costs just like it is helping out the Evergreen Line and Gateway Program's capital costs?

Waterfront Station Open House

On my way back home from work, I happened to stumble upon the Waterfront Station Area redevelopment plan open house. The City of Vancouver calls it "The Hub." The plan is to transform the area into "a world-class transportation interchange to integrate the many transportation modes which converge in the area, connect the City of Vancouver with the waterfront in this part of Downtown, and introduce high quality new development integrated with the transportation hub." The main areas of focus are the integration of a multimodal street network, transit-oriented land use, build heights and views, and the interface with transit, rail, and marine transportation network. You can read more at the City of Vancouver website on this plan. The plan is going to Vancouver City council for a vote in April and redevelopment isn't expected to happen for the next 10 years.


Of course TransLink is part of this planning process as this area is a major transit hub. TransLink is looking at redeveloping the whole station complex to better integrate SkyTrain, the Canada Line, West Coast Express, and SeaBus. It was interesting to note the comments on the following photo on Intercity Passenger Rail Service:

While not currently on the horizon, consideration will be given to providing passenger and track capacity for future intercity passenger rail service (e.g. to Seattle and Portland) within the facility given its strategically central location and lack of alternatives

Now when are we going to fix that Fraser River Rail Bridge!