Update and Open House for the Langley Urban Agricultural Project

Metro Vancouver, Langley City, and KPU’s Institute for Sustainable Food Systems have been working on a concept plan that could bring urban agriculture to Langley City along the BC Hydro transmission line right-of-way between 200 Street and 204 Street. Metro Vancouver is funding this project through its Sustainable Innovation Fund.

Back in May, an open house was held to get feedback from residents on proposed ideas for the concept plan. Based on the feedback received, three proposed design options are being presented for further feedback at an open house schedules for:

Date: Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Times: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Alice Brown Elementary School Gymnasium, 20011 - 44 Avenue

The three options being presented are as follows.

Option 1: The Classroom

Concept Option 1: The Classroom. Select image to enlarge.

The Classroom is focused on education with a school garden and outdoor classroom as core amenities that will provide a variety of opportunities for learning and exploration. The classroom will be closely connected to surrounding schools providing opportunities to link curriculum activities to real life experiences in food production. There will also be an emphasis on community education with learning about production systems and environmental issues integrated through interpretive signage. The classroom will be managed in close partnership with community schools with a focus on the production of food to be used within institutions to promote healthy eating and environmental sustainability.

Option 2: The Orchard

Concept Option 2: The Orchard. Select image to enlarge.

The Orchard is designed to be a perennial food producing landscape that is seamlessly integrated with community use and habitat creation. The orchard features three distinct community production areas including a fruit trees orchard, berry patch, and a food forest. These three areas are connected to naturalized areas on the site and intertwined with new and existing pathways. The perennial landscape is designed to be productive while also enhancing the atmosphere and quality of the space as a community amenity. There will also be opportunities for passive education through the use of educational signage.

Option 3: The Farm

Concept Option 3: The Farm. Select image to enlarge.

The farm is a concept that seeks to maximize the potential for food production on the site while maintaining current uses and limiting impacts on the surrounding neighbourhood. Production will focus on human scale agriculture and feature both perennial and annual cropping systems. The farm will aim to integrate community use of the site with production and environmental restoration. This landscape will mimic small scale farming systems and be managed through community cooperation and the central coordination of a urban agriculture society in the City of Langley.

Each of the proposed three options share some common features. The gray hashed areas are buffer planting zones which will be designed to separate the proposed centre uses from surrounding residents, the hydro towers, and other utilities. The green areas are habitat areas which will be designed to enhance biodiversity, manage invasive spices, and includes the restoration of Muckle Creek. The yellow area is a pollinator garden corridor which will have plantings that will attract wild pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

For more information on the Langley Urban Agricultural Project, please visit the City’s website. I should note that this project includes the development of a preferred concept plan, but not the implementation of the plan.

Langley City proposing changes to zoning bylaw

There are two fundamental documents which guide what can be built in a community, and how development can proceed. They are the Official Community Plan and zoning bylaw. A zoning bylaw can dictate land-use including what businesses are allowed to operate, where buildings can be located, the size of buildings, landscaping, and parking requirements among other things.

Langley City staff are in the process of updating our zoning bylaw. One of the major drivers for updating the zoning bylaw is to modernize it, and make it easier to read. Some of the high-level changes being proposed include:

Multifamily Residential Zones
Revised provisions for building siting, massing, height, increased amenity space, requiring balconies, requiring 5% of apartment units to be adaptable housing, and allowing fee simple rowhouses.

Single Family Residential Zones
New or revised provisions for minimum house size so that a house can’t be smaller than 1,000 sq. ft, limiting accessory building size to no larger than 645 sq. ft. in most cases, and limiting the impervious surface area on a lot to 60%.

The proposed zoning bylaw will allow RVs to be parked or stored in a building, outside if it is to the side or back of a house, or anywhere on a lot between the beginning of May and the end of September.

Sustainable Development
New provisions to require electric vehicle parking, surface parking space shading by requiring a tree canopy, limiting impervious surface areas, and increasing landscaping soil depth.

Downtown Zone
New provisions for the downtown C1 zone to allow brew pubs, craft brewers, and vintners as permitted uses, and to limit drive-thrus.

Langley City is hosting an open house on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at City Hall between 2pm and 4pm, and between 6pm and 8pm to get your feedback and provide more detailed information on the proposed changes.

Lessons from Iceland: Building Safer Cycling Infrastructure

As I noted yesterday, I was in Iceland for the last few weeks. While I was there, I observed what they were doing to make streets safer for children. You can see some examples of traffic calming in that post which has resulted in a reduction in collisions with injuries, and fatal collisions.

Neighbourhood streets are 30km/h zones in Iceland, and cycling on these low-volume, low-speed streets are safe. They also have streets with higher volumes of traffic and/or higher speeds. Based on the type of street, they are building out safe cycling infrastructure that matches the type of street.

I snapped a few pictures of examples of the different types of cycling lanes from their capital city, Reykjavík, which has the same population as the Township of Langley. As I noted yesterday, about 80% of trips in their capital region are by car.

This first example is from one of the major roads in the city. This road would be similar to 200 Street. The left side of the picture shows the driving lanes, the centre is the walking path, and the right is the cycling lanes. At traffic lights, they have vehicle, cycling, and walking signals.

An example of a 50km/h, high motor vehicle volume street.

At intersections with traffic lights, right or left turns on red are not permitted. Before the motor vehicle light turns green, the walking and cycling lights turn green. This allows venerable road users to get into the intersection before vehicles which increases visibility and improves safety.

The second example shows a protected cycling lane on a street that is similar to 53 Avenue in Langley City. People cycling are buffered from motor vehicle traffic by parked cars. One of the major risks when cycling is getting doored. If you are cycling on the example street, you stay to the right of the thick white line to avoid the “door zone.” If you look at the picture closely, you can also see the 30km/h speed limit sign for a local side street.

An example of a 50km/h, lower motor vehicle volume street.

The final example is from one of the High Streets in Reykjavík. It is a similar design to 203 Street. The cycling lane is at sidewalk level. The vehicle lanes are also narrowed to encourage people to travel at 30km/h.

An example of a High Street.

Reykjavík is a city with snow in the winter and rain in the summer. It is also a place where the majority of people drive. It is encouraging to see a mid-size city working hard to make cycling and walking safer for kids that has resulted in reduced injuries and fatalities. As they continue to build-out their safe walking and cycling network, more people will choose to walk and cycle.

Personally, I’d like to see more cycling lanes like in the second example that buffers people cycling from people driving in Langley City.

Lessons from Iceland: 30km/h zones, traffic calming, and building safe streets for kids

For the last few weeks, I have been travelling around Iceland. When I’m in different places, I like seeing how other governments tackle land-use and transportation issues, and if their solutions could be applied in Metro Vancouver and Langley City.

Iceland is very similar to BC when it comes to how people get around; driving is the primary mode of transportation. The following graph shows people's primary mode of travel. It is in Icelandic, so from left to right, the columns are auto, transit, cycling, walking. The grey is their capital region (Reykjavík), and the other bars represent the remaining regions which contain smaller towns. In their capital region, which has a similar scale and feel as Victoria, more people drive than in the smaller towns, where walking makes up the difference.

Iceland travel mode share. From left to right: driving, transit, cycling, walking.

One of the big pushes in Iceland is to reduce the speed of traffic on local roads to improve safety for children and vulnerable road users. Major roads similar to King George Boulevard or Fraser Highway have speed limits between 45km/h and 60km/h. Side streets, most streets in downtowns, and all streets near public facilities such as schools and recreation centres were capped at 30 km/h.

Iceland’s transportation department has a guide called “Umferðaröryggisáætlanir sveitarfélaga” or “The Traffic Safety Planning Guide for Local Government” which offers advice on how to building safe streets including maximum speed limits.

Since implementing 30km/h speed zones, accidents with injuries have decreased by 27% and serious accidents have decreased by 62%.

In Iceland, there is a limited number of police officers. In two weeks, I saw four police officers. All that to say, enforcement is done with road design. People certainly speed in Iceland, but in built-up areas, road design forces people to slow down.

The following pictures show some examples of traffic calming used in Iceland.

An example of a raise crosswalk at an intersection in Iceland.

A downtown street in Iceland which includes multiply mid-block raised crosswalks.

An example of a typical mid-block raise crosswalk in a residential area in Iceland.

An example of an intersection in a downtown core in Iceland.

An example of changing the road texture, and narrowing a road, when entering at 30 km/h zone.

I noticed that children of all ages biked and walked without their parents supervising them. When streets are safe for kids, they are safe for everyone.

Children of all ages use their bikes to get to school.

The traffic calming measures implemented in Iceland can be applied to communities such as Langley. 30km/h zones like in Iceland can be implemented in a similar fashion in BC. Like BC, urban roads are 50km/h unless otherwise posted. In Langley City, we are starting to build more raise crosswalks and crosswalks with curbs extensions as an example.