Langley City's Rolling 2026 - 2031 Strategic Plan

Every year, Langley City Council updates its strategic priorities plan. This plan outlines the City's mission, values, and core focus areas over the next five years. It also includes specific actions that Council would like to take. This plan is meant to be a living document as priorities may change and the City completes specific actions.

There are five top priorities for 2026, which layer onto the current work the City is doing within the strategic priorities plan.

Redevelop 20411 Fraser Highway: Partner with a developer to create a new mixed-use building that will include market and non-market homes at the entrance to the Fraser Highway Oneway.

Create a Standards of Maintenance Bylaw: A standard of maintenance bylaw sets the safety and quality standards that residential and commercial landlord must achieve on their properties.

Tenant Relocation Plans Policy: Last summer, Langley City Council approved a new tenant relocation policy, which set tenant compensation, relocation support, and the ability to return to a building after a redevelopment at a discounted rate. Council would like to see further refinements to the policy.

Amenity Cost Charges (ACC) Bylaw: The provincial government introduced ACCs to replace voluntary Community Amenity Contributions from developers. Local governments can use ACCs to fund infrastructure, including municipal buildings such as fire halls and recreation centres, that are required due to growth.

Develop Long-term Staffing Plan: As our community is growing and needs change, to continue to meet the needs of residents, businesses, and Council, the City will hire external support to develop a staffing plan.

The plan also has additional new initiatives that the City may take action on over the next year if time and resources are available. The City will continue to action on existing priorities that are in progress, such as the Innovation District strategy in partnership with KPU.

You can learn more by reading the plan.

McLellan Substation and Brydon Lagoon Impacts

As you may know, BC Hydro is upgrading and expanding the McLellan Substation just west of Brydon Lagoon in Surrey. As part of the upgrade, BC Hydro will be removing a significant number of trees on their property. While this project is entirely within Surrey, it will impact Brydon Lagoon. As such, Langley City staff, as well as Langley community organizations such as the Langley Field Naturalists, have been talking to BC Hydro to find ways to minimize the impacts.

I wanted to share the latest map showing the tree-clearing area and where BC Hydro will retain trees.

Map that shows McLellan Substation upgrade area, including tree removal and retention areas. Select the map to enlarge.

As you can see, BC Hydro's current plan is to retain the section of trees (550 m2) on the southeast part of their property and a two- to six-metre buffer on the east edge of their property line.

I also understand that BC Hydro plans to do further landscaping and natural restoration after they complete the substation expansion.

More information about this project is available on their website, including information about how to reach out to BC Hydro.

Our Air is Cleaner Than Ever, Saving Lifes

Sometimes, it seems that all we get is bad news regarding the environment, but there is a lot of good work going on, such as cleaning up our air, water, and land. One area where we have made a lot of progress is cleaning up the air. Metro Vancouver is part of the Lower Fraser Valley airshed, and the Metro Vancouver Regional District completes a comprehensive inventory of air pollutants every five years.

They recently shared trends of air emissions from 2000 to 2020. The bottom line is that “today’s cleaner air saves the lives of approximately 580 Metro Vancouver residents each year, compared to air quality in 2001.”

The following tables show the reductions of certain emissions types.

Volatile Organic Compounds Emissions Trend in the Fraser Valley 2000-2020. Select the chart to enlarge.

Nitrogen Oxides Emissions Trend in the Fraser Valley 2000-2020. Select the chart to enlarge.

Except for fine particulate matter emissions from wildfires, PM2.5 emissions are also declining.

Fine Particulate Matter Emissions Trend in the Fraser Valley 2000-2020. Select the chart to enlarge.

Of course, more work needs to be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

GHG Emissions Trend in the Fraser Valley 2000-2020. Select the chart to enlarge.

What Does It Cost to Build an Apartment Parking Spot?

Parking is one of those topics that people can feel very passionate about, whether people believe we have too much or too little parking. In Langley City today, most of our community north of the Nicomekl River does not have minimum parking requirements for residential use per provincial law as they are within provincial designated transit-oriented areas.

Building residential parking, especially in apartments, is expensive. Many numbers have been used over the years to quantify the cost of underground parking. The Metro Vancouver Regional District recently commissioned a study to determine the cost per stall.

The cost ranges from $117,382 to $137,721 per apartment stall. It might seem surprising initially, but parking is more expensive per stall in communities with higher per-unit parking requirements. This cost does make sense. Building a two-storey underground parkade is far more expensive than a one-storey parkade. With new six-storey wood-frame apartments in Langley City, parkades range from one to two stories.

The regional district also updated its apartment parking utilization study. Below are the results for South of Fraser Communities.

Municipality	Residential Stall/Unit (Sampled)	Residential Stall Utilization	Visitor Stall Utilization
Delta	1.39	72%	47%
Langley City	1.27	75%	57%
Langley Township	1.37	63%	41%
Surrey	1.31	70%	40%
White Rock	1.8	59%	35%

The parking utilization for residential parking demand was surveyed between 11:00 pm and 1:00 am, and visitor parking demand was surveyed between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm.

While Langley City Council does not control residential minimum parking requirements in most areas designated for apartments, there are still a few small areas outside the provincial designated transit-oriented areas that we do. A reduction in our residential parking to one parking space per unit for apartment buildings in these areas could reduce per-unit costs around $30,000, helping with affordability while providing adequate parking based on actual utilization.

To clarify, the study did not look at parking costs or utilization for townhouses, 'plexes, or detached homes.