Surrey business leaders are joining civic leaders south of the Fraser River by lobbying for light rail in Surrey to be the region’s top transit priority once the province confirms financing for the Evergreen Line.
Metro Vancouver mayors are urging the BC Liberals to hike gas taxes by $0.02 per litre with that funding earmarked to pay for the Evergreen Line and other transit upgrades.
“Light rail will for sure bring more shoppers to Guildford Town Centre,” said that shopping centre’s general manager Peggy White. “We already enjoy about 10 million shoppers each year and I know that the folks at Metrotown probably enjoy double that because SkyTrain is there.”
White’s 985,000-square-foot mall is currently being renovated to add a further 215,000 square feet of retail space where there previously were parking stalls, she said.
A multi-storey parkade is being built so that there will be 5,200 total parking spaces – up from 3,500 current spaces and the 5,000 spaces that existed before the mall expansion started. Most of the 800 people who work at Guildford on an average day drive to work and take parking spots that would otherwise be freed up for shoppers, she said.
“A lot of people travel across the bridge to do a lot of their shopping – fancy shopping, if you wish – what you would get on Robson Street, Metrotown or Oakridge. We want to fill that void south of the Fraser [River], big time,” said White.
Metrotown has 1.8 million square feet of retail space and 8,500 parking spaces according to general manager Doug MacDougall.
White believes that having light rail run from the City Centre SkyTrain station along a modified 104th Avenue to Guildford and then to South Surrey via King George Boulevard would dramatically improve transit access to Guildford.
Mayor Dianne Watts mentioned that route during her state of the city address in April. She added that another spike in that light-rail project would be to extend to Langley along Fraser Highway.
“The run along 104th Avenue from City Centre to Guildford is a straightforward line. The problem is that it’s too short,” acting mayor Marvin Hunt told Business in Vancouver. “All the way down to south Surrey would be nice but it will come down to how many dollars we have to spend.”
He mocked comments that Vancouver mayoral candidates Gregor Robertson and Suzanne Anton made earlier this summer to Business in Vancouver, advocating an extension of the Millennium Line through the Broadway corridor as the next logical transit megaproject for the region.
“Vancouver is always the first priority because it’s Vancouver. They’ve got the Canada Line, the Expo Line, the Millennium Line, the Broadway B-Line busses. They’ve got whatever else under the sun. But, yes, they’re right, Vancouver should get more,” Hunt said before quickly adding, “I’m being exceedingly sarcastic.”
Surrey does not have even a single B-Line bus right now, although that would be slated to change if Victoria approves the $0.02 hike to gas taxes to pay for the Evergreen Line.
“The reason we want light rail is that we want to promote our businesses. With SkyTrain, whether it is up in the air or tunnelled, people don’t get to see businesses when they are going by. They don’t get to see new stores that go in,” Hunt said.
Some business owners along the route, such as Lisa Bui who owns Pink Rose Nail on 104th Avenue, told BIV that they are ambivalent about improved transit.
Unlike many main streets, 104th Avenue already does not have parking, Bui said. Her shop has one off-road designated spot and she does not expect that clients will have any more difficulty parking if the light-rail line is installed.
The Surrey Board of Trade has through the years participated in countless studies and workshops investigating rapid transit in the city.
The board’s CEO, Anita Patil Huberman, told Business in Vancouver that the three main technologies recently considered were SkyTrain, light rail or an expanded system of B-Line busses.
“We created a policy statement at our board meeting in May that officially advises TransLink that we support the development of light rail as the primary rapid transit option in Surrey,” she said.