Surrey Investing in Cycling

Last week, I gave an overview of what Surrey had planned for cycling infrastructure improvements for the next 10 years. I wanted to compare the spending in Surrey to Langley for 2010 and 2011, but was unable to find the numbers. I emailed the friendly Surrey staff and got this reply.

The City has increased our annual capital allocation towards cycling from $500,000 in 2010 up to $2,000,000 in 2011. Additionally, in 2010, the City also invested into signing the entire bike route network for a cost of approximately $250,000, with final touches being put into place within the next several weeks to complete the network. In 2010, the City added approximately 12 km of on-street bike lanes. Our plans for 2011 include new pavement markings and bike symbols, as well as intersection improvements for conflict areas.

This is really exciting news and shows that Surrey is starting to embrace a multimodal transportation strategy. In 2011, Surrey will be spending $4.33 per person on cycling infrastructure, the Township of Langley could be spending either $0 or $1.68, and the City of Langley will be spending nothing.

More on roads

Last Friday, I posted about how many people consider car insurance a user-fee like tolling and I pointed out that this was not the case. Anyway, I said that “provincial highways are a drop in the bucket when you consider that in Metro Vancouver you can count the provincial roads on one hand”. I found the 10 Year Servicing Plan from Surrey’s Engineering Department which really drives the point that while the province can build mega-road projects, it won’t help most people at the end of the day. In Surrey, 85km or 4% of roads are within provincial jurisdiction while 1972km of roads are under local jurisdiction.

On Wednesday, I talked about how cities need to embrace non-auto transportation simply because there is no more room for roads as population growth continues to explode. The following map shows the road expansion plans for Surrey out to 2019.

Select Map to Enlarge

Cycling in Surrey

I sent an email to the City of Surrey to see how much they spent in 2010 and how much they plan to spend on dedicated cycling infrastructure for 2011. Like in Langley, this will not include new roads which now come with cycling infrastructure. In the meantime, I found the 2010 Capital Construction Program for Roads, Drainage, Sewer and Water which outlines the following cycling projects with no cost attached for individual projects. Also Surrey installed cycling signage on all their major cycling routes. Surrey worked on the following cycling projects:

On-street Bicycle Network
148 St Bikeway: 096 Ave - 110 Ave

Off-Street Bicycle Core Network
Green Timbers Ph 4: 164 St - 168 St

Off-street Bicycle Path
Wildflower (Nordel): 122 St - 125 St
Semiahmoo Trail / Crescent Rd
Fraser Hts Bike Path (Barnston): 168 - 170A St
Quibble Greenway: 104 Ave - 106 Ave
Quibble Greenway: 106 Ave - 108 Ave

Cycling Budget in Langley

Since this is budget season, I though I'd take a look at how Langley is funding cycling.

In the City of Langley's capital budget, they will be spending $0 on exclusive cycling projects in 2011 and 2012. To be fair all major projects like the Fraser River Bridge, 208th Street Improvements, and new Roberts Bank project have cycling built into the project.

In the Township of Langley $176,000 (0.2% of the total transportation budget) was for exclusive cycling projects and it might be cut to $0 this year. Again all new road construction in the Township has cycling lanes built in and there will be cycling provisions at the new Park and Ride by Highway 1.

Not surprising, cycling in chronically underfunded. Langley is an interesting community with very rural and very urban areas. With the feedback I've received from working with the Greater Langley Cycling Coalition, there are two types of cycling improvements people would like to see on the road. The first would be cycling lanes and even separated bike lane on busy urban corridors. In the rural parts of Langley, the cycling community would like to see "share the road" signage, but are opposed to bike lanes. This makes sense.

I was having a chat with someone over breakfast this morning and he was telling me how he thought bike lanes were stupid. I agreed with him that installing bike lanes in rural areas may not be the best thing to do, but they are important for urban areas. The South of Fraser is one of the fast growing parts of the region and there is simply no space to expand the local roads in the urban parts (they aren't going to build a freeway through the centre of Surrey or Langley.) I've looked at the transportation plans and with the exception of expanding all the major roads to 4 lanes, what you see today is pretty much it. A planner from Surrey told me that he has embraced cycling because he doesn't see how he can keep people moving with an auto-only transportation system. When you look at the success of Downtown Vancouver it is not because the city installed a freeways or increased parking, it because the City embraced walking, cycling, transit, and place-making.