Scot wants this story retweeted:
.
.
A few quotes from the report in quick succession, starting at 1:31:
- Hundreds of homes are rising here …
- A stretch of road where sidewalks suddenly turn to soft shoulders ….
- Almost two kilometres and not a single marked crosswalk …
.
.
Most intriguing, though, is this at 1:58:
- But last December, traffic engineers said roads this busy and fast needs stops …
A crosswalk is approved for an intersection on the Surrey-Langley border, but Surrey is waiting for the road to be widened for a left-hand turn bay.
The coverage is motivated by the tragedy, but the story is really about the difficulty suburban municipalities on the urban fringe, expanding rapidly, have with tansitioning away from motordom.
They built 72nd Avenue as a de-facto high-speed arterial – and now have the dilemma of converting it for walkability. To do so would mean slowing and stopping the traffic more often. The Mayor would prefer that “all motorists, all cyclists, all pedestrians exercise caution.” But they’ve only designed the streets for one of them.
If there’s an indictment, it’s simply this: How can a municipality approve hundreds of family-oriented units and not have a single crosswalk for two kilometres?
Until there’s blood.
Utterly shameful. “But the LOS! The Standards! The minute of time saved by travelling at 50mph instead of 45mph for a few blocks!”
Sounds like 16th Ave cutting through UBC or Pacific Spirit Park at 70 km/h … An urban car oriented highway in an allegedly “green & sustainable” community.
Our proudest achievement: Building deadly, unhealthy communities. One piece of farmland at a time.
Sad but true
Why is it sad to build housing ? Not all communities are unhealthy. Is Langley unhealthy ? People who move here need to live somewhere. But yes, we can do it better.
East of the Fraser a car is a necessity as Langley is not yet as dense as Vancouver, N Van or Burnaby. Some people actually like houses with lawns and that requires a car.
The issue is lack of safe crossings and/or excessive speed and/or lack of enforcement of speeding.
East Clayton, on the Surrey side, is actually quite walkable. Try driving through the area at the end of the school day, and you’ll be amazed by the number of families and children walking to school. Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of walking to work. Nor can everyone afford to live in super urbanized areas–and not everyone wants to live in downtown Vancouver. Before judging South of the Fraser, come see what you’re talking about it. You might be pleasantly surprised…
Exurban areas really struggle in the conversion to suburban. What was once an empty road where everyone was free to go as fast as they wished suddenly has to accommodate the traffic generated by homes with 3 vehicles per household. The knee-jerk response is to double the width of the road and keep it as a de facto highway. But then the kids with skateboards appear and the elderly gentlemen want to go for a walk and there’s nowhere for them to be.
Nobody thinks the issue might be the widened road, the 3 cars/household or that the fundamental problem causing that phenomenon is the truly myopic decision to build nothing but housing for as far as the eye can see.
Our modern society has a big problem trying to build villages instead of endless subdivisions. First and foremost they simply aren’t allowed. Most municipalities refuse to allow mixed uses in areas designated for housing. You can’t walk to the store if nobody is allowed to build one in the first place.
But the things that created villages in the first place no longer work. You can’t build a community around a church, a post office and high street of small shops anymore.
I used to live in an east Vancouver neighbourhood where the nearest food was over 1km away and geared to the specialty needs of a single ethnicity. So I would pile the whole family into the car to go grocery shopping. We didn’t go to the nearest store because my wife preferred the selection, layout and clientele elsewhere. Hey once you’re in the car what’s another 5-10 minutes? Occasionally we’d drive even farther to a big box store surrounded by parking. Even the bus was unreliable. Apart from the size of our house and mortgage it all felt very suburban and that was a key reason why we moved.
Great points. Also note that the density in these neighbourhoods is actually pretty high, e.g. East Clayton in Surrey that has carriagehomes as well, but as you said with no walkable amenities around, each home comes with 2 cars and the streetscape to accommodate them. I honestly don’t see a quick remedy for these exurban environments like Surrey or Langley where even if a Save on Foods is within walking distance people will still feel a need to have numerous vehicles because of their location in the region. I saw the same issue in Auckland for Hobsonville Point, 24 km west of the city. All the principles of New Urbanism were there but the isolation and the pure scale and speed required to build the supporting shops, services and amenities means that you have to have 20-30k in population before you can take it serious as a walkable community, unless you build all the amenities first which no one will fit the bill for.
This doesn’t only apply where the stores are sparse – it also applies to Downtown Vancouver, just add in “price”.
It also applies to those who cross-border shop.
It’s a bit unreasonable (or naive?) to think that the modern family or shopper (with varied tastes and preferences) can satisfy all (or even half) of their household needs within walking distance of their house.
My situation is I live car free in the West End, walk and cycle everywhere so I pay more indeed to shop at Choices, etc but I save money in car expenses, gym membership, sanity, time, and I grow spinach, kale, lettuce and other veg on my apartment balcony. Although I am not a vegetarian, cutting back on having a meat dish every night has saved me a lot of money. Bottom line is people make a variety of lifestyle choices that in my opinion they cant blame on anyone but themselves.
Well said & congratulations. Some folks prefer to live in Langley with a yard. As such a big city or metropolitan area like Vancouver ought to provide a variety of housing choices as there are so many life style preferences. We can debate pricing of roads, of course, and I too believe car use is too inexpensive in Vancouver. if we priced roads higher, and parking, and offered alternatives, such as faster buses or subways, people would use them more.
As such, maybe lots & roads feeding into them are too cheap in Langley ?
Satisfy their needs — yes. Satisfy their wants, preferences and tastes – no for some and yes for others.
“satisfy all (or even half) of their household needs within walking distance of their house”
This household manages to satisfy all its household needs exactly that way, despite living 20 minutes walk from central downtown – though I did get a friend to drive me the 3km round trip to get a bag of seed compost this year because I was too lazy to hitch up my bike trailer and pedal it.
I’m pretty sure my grocery costs can compete too – 19 cents/lb for local grown tomatoes this morning and Okanagan apples at 45 cents..
Thomas wants to pave over the ALR so all that local food your enjoying instead comes from Mexico, New Zealand, Holland and god knows where just to reduce land prices, i.e. increase auto dependent sprawl.
I don’t expect an urban village to provide all my needs, just the everyday ones like food. Once residents have to get into a car to feed themselves then the chance of survival for any local business is low.
I don’t expect to find a full selection of clothing within walking distance nor should I. Seriously, how often do I shop for new clothes? Apart from my cycling stuff I probably haven’t purchased any clothing this year for myself. The kids are different matter, but even they only need stuff a few times per year.
If I’m lucky my area will have a jeweller or dentist or veterinarian, but it’s unlikely. However, it’s also unlikely that I’ll need to visit any one of those places more than once per year.
You mention price as a factor and Scot B addressed that. I will too. I now have a grocery store within walking distance. It doesn’t offer the lowest prices in town, but it doesn’t need to. It costs me nothing to get there and its open all my waking hours so shopping can be spontaneous. If I’m willing to get on my bike, ride the bus or get in my car I can find better selection and lower prices, but doing any of those things costs me time and/or money so the savings have to be significant for the trip to be worth making.
Many occasional purchases can be acquired online and delivered to my front door so the need to plan trips across town drops every year. I’ll have to run the math some day soon, but I think we’ve reached the point where having a Costco membership no longer makes economic sense.
You also mentioned cross border shopping. I understand the desire to save money, I’m on a very tight budget, but I believe that shopping in Canada is the best thing for all of us to do. Money spent locally maintains local jobs. I’m not anti-American (except maybe for their dairy products) and have vacationed there this year, but I don’t make “shopping trips” because I can’t think of anything I want that isn’t available either in Canada or online.
I think you can do well if you have a combination of items sources within walking distance and others bought in bulk or on sale at lower prices elsewhere – but you should still combine trips to cut down on transportation costs (transit or gas).
Where I am in Yaletown the closest supermarket is Urban Fare. Others along my typical walking routes are IGA MarketPlace, Nesters and Shoppers Drug Mart (really). I typically stop in at the No Frills on Broadway to stock up on whatever is on sale when I’m out and about (there’s one in Denman Place for those in the West End). (i.e. Astro or Source yogurt is usually on sale for $1.99 per 650g tub)
WRT Costco, other places are cheaper (esp. if you don’t have a family to feed), but there’s the convenience of a one stop shopping (i.e. only one trip per week (or two) for all your household needs).