All the problems of suburban transportation in one handy story from the Langley Advance.
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A BAD FIT FOR CAR-DEPENDENT COMMUNITIES:
Residents in a northern Willoughby neighbourhood are going back to the drawing board in an effort to get more on-street parking near their homes.
The residents of the areas around 80th Avenue between 208th Street and 212th Street (above) came to Langley Township council in mid-December and were happy to immediately get some temporary relief.
Over the holidays, council voted to allow on-street parking on some roads around the neighbourhood, thus freeing up space while relatives visited.
That extra parking ended after New Year’s, and now the group is looking for new options.
“There’s a compromise possible,” said Courtney Wade, one member of the group.
The problem is relatively high density, in the area that is a mix of single family homes on small lots and townhouses.
Many homes in the area were built with three parking spaces on their property, and a number came with secondary suites. With two homeowners each with their own car, a renter, or a couple of high school or college aged kids at home, many residents are using up every available space they have. Visitors or tradespeople can’t park out front on 80th anymore, or on some of the nearby side roads. Some residents are stashing their cars in bushes nearby, said Levy Manuel, another member of the group.
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STREETS TOO WIDE BUT NOT WIDE ENOUGH
One of the sore points for the residents is that the finished sections of 80th Avenue are very broad. Built for the capacity when the area is fully developed, they include several lanes and bike lanes, but no on-street parking.
Ashish Kapoor wonders why construction vehicles working along some sections of 80th Avenue are allowed on-street parking, including blocking bike lanes, while residents on the opposite side are banned from doing the same thing.
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TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES SQUEEZED OUT
Members of the group say they don’t want the bike lanes blocked forever or removed.
“We’re cyclists too,” said Wade. “We’re not looking to fight with cyclists.”
Wade and others believe there’s room enough for bike lanes and parking.
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NO TRANSIT, AND NO HOPE FOR TRANSIT
Michael Coombes noted that there just isn’t any transit, which leaves driving the only option for most residents.
“Show me a bus stop,” he said.
A TransLink spokesperson recently told the Langley Advance there are no near-term plans for bus service along the 208th Street corridor due to the agency’s financial crunch.
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FRAGMENTED DEVELOPMENT
Some parking in the area could actually expand in the future as the roads are developed.
One issue is that roads are widened by developers as they build, and the area is still a patchwork of completed projects and lots that have yet to see construction start.
Paul Cordeiro, a Township of Langley traffic engineer, noted that a stretch of 209th Street currently has no parking because only one side of it has been built.
There isn’t room for two-way travel and parking, but when the other side of the road is built, on-street parking will be allowed again, he said.
There are a number of similar half-roads in the area.
“We try to open up the lanes when we can,” Cordeiro said.
He also noted that construction vehicles are allowed temporary parking on major roads like 80th Avenue to keep them off residential roads nearby.
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SOLVING THE PROBLEM BY MAKING IT WORSE
The issue is one that has come up at several other Willoughby developments in various forms. Residents have either complained about parking in their own neighbourhoods, or come to the council worried that developments nearby would overload already full on-street parking capacity.
Parking has been part of the debate over a number of recent developments west of 208th Street, where a denser mix of townhouses and condos is either planned or already under construction.
Park and Ride is the solution. Cars in lower density suburbs coupled with parkades/lots at transit nodes.
Not everyone likes to have high density. Cities need a variety of housing: single family, townhouses, duplexes, lowrise, midrise, highrise .. and what makes sense in Yaletown or the westend in Vancouver may not make sense in Langley, Delta or Surrey.
Perhaps the cars need to get smaller, too ! Charge more for parking and annual vehicle registration for larger cars. It makes no sense that a smart car costs the same parking as a huge, souped up pickup truck with monster wheels, an SUV or a Hummer.
Obviously park and rides are not the solution here. The problem is no place to park the cars near homes. The solution is more transit.
Well, people like cars or let’s call it personal vehicles. Perhaps if they were smaller, like a SmartCar or an e-bike or a motorbike with a roof or a scooter for 2 people or a VW 1 type vehicle going on sale in China this year for less than $1000 the problem could be solved.
Public transit is NOT the only answer. It is part of an overall personal transportation solution, and the personal vehicle will be with us for decades, but it will not necessarily be the common 4 person 6 m long car weighing 1.5 tonnes.
read this here, page 9: http://www.myuna.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/CampusResident_Vol4_9_September-2013.pdf
The cars do need to get smaller.
Unfortunately, many many suburbanites feel they have a right to own as many cars as they feel necessary and to unlimited, on street parking. Many feel that they own the space in front of their homes. It’s absurd.
Apartment dwellers don’t typically buy or lease a home with fewer parking spaces than vehicles owned, but this frequently happens in the car-dominated suburbs.
My best friend lives in this Langley development, and all he and his neighbours seem to talk about is parking.
I wouldn’t generalize. People who live in townhouses in Willoughby have different needs and priorities than those that live in langely city or acreages in south langely. One would have different parking issues in Vancouver going from the west end to southlands to hastings-sunrise during the PNE.
And i dislike the unfortunate title of the post – IMO this is a long-term positive story. Your best transit plan is your land use plan – Density is being hard-wired in in a greenfield development. now this neighbourhood realizes it has to balance car, bike and transit use in a still developing neighbourhood. yes, it will likely be difficult to have a multicar household in willoughby now and going into the future, but that’s the intent.
ToL has planned for density despite having transit, despite pressure to have less density. if munis refused to increase density until transit was built first, we’d get nowhere. IMO this is a positive planning story.
I too think this is a step in the right direction. But it’s going to be a fight to convince many suburbanites that on-street parking isn’t a right. The municipalities are going to have to hold firm.
I strongly disagree.
Density on its own is not the answer, and rather in the wrong places density can be more destructive. This neighbourhood is surrounded by farmland and other sprawl next to the highway – it’s inconvenient and out of the way to serve with transit and too far from anywhere to bike. It’s only accessible by cars, and the developments that are going in there are almost entirely residential, so not building a complete community. By adding density here, we’re just locking more people into car-dependency.
Density should be added where there’s opportunities for transit and complete communities. I think this area would have been better left completely undeveloped.
But this area of langley has long been within the urban containment boundary (ie, this is a part of the metro area where we want to direct and shape growth).
http://public.metrovancouver.org/planning/development/strategy/Pages/RGSMaps.aspx
Indeed. On-street parking is far too cheap.
If people would be charged for parking on the street, a street they do not own, then people would behave differently. Ditto in Point Grey or any more leafy neighborhood where people convert garages into apartments, offices, fitness studios or in-law suites but then park for free on the street.
Given a value of perhaps $200 per sq ft (or $8M an acre divided by 40,000 feet) a car use 6 x 20 = 120 sq ft of space, or a value of $24,000. Using 5% that is $1200/year or $100/month minimum that a city need to charge. Higher in high density cities like Vancouver, or downtown Surrey or Point Grey, say $20M/acre or $250/month for onstreet parking. In most cities it is not even 1/10th of this figure.
Most municipal politicians are far too spineless in this regard, even our “green” Vancouver Mayor balks at that. Why ?
Being green means charging heavily for car use, both moving as well as parking.
Once car use / car parking is far more expensive, people will change behavior: use more public transit, more car shares, more smaller vehicle,s more personal vehicles like the VW1, now going on sale in China for less than $1000.
See here, page 9: http://www.myuna.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/CampusResident_Vol4_9_September-2013.pdf
If you zoom in on the aerial pic here:
https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=208th+and+80th+langley&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x5485d18e57587fb3:0x5de4811664a88958,208+St+%26+80+Ave,+Langley,+BC&gl=ca&ei=IO3QUr2WHMnZoASPiYGIBw&ved=0CCkQ8gEwAA
You’ll see that the problem arises because the townhouses are so closely packed together, there’s no curb space to park visitors’ cars.
If you’ve ever visited a suburban townhouse cplomex, they’re all like that – driveway after driveway and only 4 or 5 visitor parking spaces for the whole complex.
It makes sense to allow parking on nearby arterials (people can’t live in isolation).
A typical Vancouver residential street would have more on-street parking than within this complex.
That said, that same aerial pic does show some on-street parking outside the complex on 80th and on 208th.
Langley does the right thing. However, the owners have not yet changed behaviour. It tales a while.
Vancouver onstreet parking for free should be a thing of the past. Why is extensive use of public space, for up to 23h/day, free ?
This development is currently isolated but it will eventually be part of a continuous stretch of similar multi-family development along 208th Street. This particular site is adjacent to the proposed town centre. The density will eventually be high enough to support a transit line, maybe even a frequent transit line, between Langley City and Carvolth or Walnut Grove along 208th Street.
http://www.tol.ca/Services-Contact/Document-Library/cid/23
Without a useful transit network and with its relatively high density, Willoughby will become hellish as it gets built out. Problems resulting from auto-dependence will probably get worse before they get better.
Fortunately, the plan looks like it will work well with transit eventually.
– the half-mile arterial/collector grid is a good framework for transit, enabling fast, direct routes that put all land within walking distance of transit with minimal transit service time
– the density is relatively high
– four direct north-south routes on 196nd, 200th, 204th, and 208th would go straight into Langley City, connecting to future rapid transit along Fraser Highway
– the existing rapid bus to Lougheed Station could be extended eastward along 80th Avenue to connect all of the coverage routes together and also provide coverage to the employment lands, which would otherwise be awkwardly located far from transit routes
Any future transit-friendliness is probably happenstance. The plan doesn’t indicate a future transit network or a future frequent transit network. It oddly suggests a possible interurban station on agricultural land far from any future development. Transit policy is a one-liner: “It is proposed that, as demand arises, the penetration of transit services into Willoughby and the frequency of service be improved.”
We cannot build dense suburbs and then not have public transit in place . It has to happen in parallel. Many municipal councilors and mayors are spineless. They need to LEAD, i.e. make the TOUGH decisions. Or they should not seek office. In this case it means:
1) charge for parking on the street, say $250/month AND
2) charge more upfront to the developers so they have money to bring a bus in AND
3) actually buy the bus and bring it in AND
4) likely increase property taxes – all unpopular but required decision.
We cannot build more housing and then, maybe in 10 years, bring in a bus.
Many councilors, especially in rural areas like Langley, have no idea about urban planning or dense cities like they exist in Europe or Asia or GTA or America because they are navelgazing farmers and country bumpkins, having never lived in such dense cities. THEY ARE CLUELESS. That is where the disconnect lies !
The problem is easily solvable, but tough decisions have to made. That is called political leadership !
wow, I don’t understand your disdain for the planning for willoughby. Remember, the ToL is zoning and planning for higher density despite the lack of transit now, causing a lot of shorter-term headache for council.
would you rather build now at a lower density?
Why don’t they set up 80 ave like Surrey did with 192nd street. On street parking and separated bike lanes until the road is actually used as a 4 lane arterial, regular bike lanes and an off-street multi-use path when complete
This wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for all of our perverse subsidies and regulations.
If we actually just stepped back and *stopped subsidizing* suburbs with free parking, unfairly cheap C02 emissions, and expensive infrastructure they don’t pay for, people would naturally reorganize themselves in more sustainable ways. Also, we should stop punishing urban areas with strict zoning requirements and high taxes and CACs on dense buildings.
I think it’s hard for socially conscious left-urban types to accept, but I don’t think the answer is more regulations, or counteracting “good” subsidies. It’s fewer pro-sprawl subsidies and fewer anti-urban taxes and regulations.
Why are we organizing our society in unsustainable ways? The government gives us incentives to do so. Why is there a shortage of parking? People clamour for a free government benefit, naturally.
The biggest unsustainable issue right now is excessive salaries and defined benefits for public servants, leading to higher taxes. We should start there.
And yes, free parking is a subsidy that could be changed very very easily, but by whom ? Certainly not DB pension beneficiaries or councillors that have never ever lived in dense sustainable cities like in Europe, where density and sustainability has been practiced for 500+ years .. before cars got invented even !
You cannot expect farmers to plan urban cities nor can you expect government to cut its own unsustainable benefits.
Reblogged this on archiabyssniya.