In this year’s municipal election the citizens of Surrey have a choice to elect candidates envisioning a range of different futures for the city. What the citizens do not have, is a choice between two different rapid transit lines. Following almost ten years of lobbying, studying and planning efforts the option selected was Light Rail Transit not Skytrain. The funding was approved by the entire Mayor’s Council, TransLink, the provincial government and the federal government. The alignment of all these levels of public authority for massive infrastructure happen very rarely.
The size of the investment is tremendous. For the first time in nearly 25 years of being ignored by senior governments to expand rapid transit, Surrey has the opportunity to mobilize $1.65 billion.
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The city is at a major crossroad. Former mayor Dianne Watts created a strategic vision for LRT as the major mode of transportation for moving people within the city limits quickly and efficiently. The message outlined challenges of how best to cover many large communities spread out over a vast geographic area and how best to serve a growing city. The answer to this problem was LRT because it was capable of dispersing development at medium densities. Unlike Skytrain which encouraged high-rise towers clustered around fewer and further apart stations LRT improves the streetscape because the entire route would be walkable with more stations closely situated.
Based on the past federal census, Surrey’s population growth rate is nearly double that of Vancouver. Over the next few decades it will surpass Vancouver as the most populous city in B.C. The approved L-shaped line will immediately connect the underserved communities of Newton and Guildford to the emerging downtown core. LRT is not only a major investment for transit but a major private investment draw for companies to potentially move their headquarters to Surrey. The trend is exacerbated as Vancouver becomes severely unaffordable for workers.
We can learn some valuable lessons from the disastrous transit outcome of Brampton, Ontario. In 2015, Brampton city council voted 6-5 to reject the LRT project that was slated to be built. Fast forward three years later the city still did not have any additional transit expansion in place. In July 2018, Brampton city council approved spending an additional $4.4 million on studying other transit options. The result is years of more delay without a plan, ballooning cost estimates and more expensive studies.
A major role of a municipal politician is to effectively articulate complex problems and provide clear solutions to move the city forward. Instead the citizens have become subjected to political games between a former mayor and new mayoral candidates unable to paint a clear vision for the future. The greater fear is a delay or cancellation of LRT will result in citizens becoming pawns during next year’s federal election campaigns.
The official City of Surrey slogan is “The future lives here.” As we approach the final days of the municipal election which proverbial route will the city take? One welcoming the 21st century by adding an efficient mode of mass transit to an underserved network? Or will it regress into a 20th century era autodom mired in growing traffic jams? The answer to this important question will be revealed on October 20th, choose wisely.
Harpinder Sandhu is a Surrey Resident, VP of CUPE 1767 and a geographer
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