Fort Langley – once the colonial capital of British Columbia – is now a charming riverside village of unique shops, restaurants and compact subdivisions at the north end of Glover Road.
Langley Township Councillor Jordan Bateman makes a good case that with the closure of the Albion Ferry that once disgorged traffic through the village, being bypassed has its benefits.
Says Bateman on his blog: “The ferry wreaked havoc on Fort Langley’s village life. Noisy trucks, rumbling motorcycles and platoons of cars whipped through town, to and from the ferry. They rarely stopped, and hardly ever slowed to see what the Fort had to offer. Today, a year after the opening of the Golden Ears Bridge, Fort Langley village life is far better. There are more tourists than ever before. The amount, and the speed, of traffic on Glover has plunged. People are waving pedestrians across the street. Sidewalk life is teeming with energy. Coffee shops, restaurants and patios are full.”
Then he draws the larger lesson.
“That’s all thanks to putting the arterial, crosstown traffic where it belongs: on arterial routes, away from our neighbourhoods. The Golden Ears Bridge allowed us to follow Vancouver’s model: moving a freeway out of our Fort Langley village.
“So the roads will always be with us,” he concludes. “It’s not a question of ‘or’; it’s a question of ‘and.’ And we need it all: good jobs close to home, pedestrians, cyclists, transit and, yes, roads.”
Gotta agree with Jordan. Even as a frequent critic of the Gateway Project, I have no doubt that Fort Langley is a better place without a lot of traffic thanks to new arterials elsewhere. Just as Vancouver is better by not having built freeways.
And I agree with his conclusion: it’s not a question of “or” but a question of “and.”
Problem: Gateway is not about “and.” Gateway is about shaping the land use to come – not the mixed-use leftovers from a pre-motordom age. It’s certainly not about making more Fort Langleys. Gateway will shape development next to the interchanges and along the arterials into an auto-dependent urban region. Widening Highway 1 and twinning the Port Mann Bridge have been anticipated since they chose the right-of-way for the Trans-Canada Highway – based on the expectation that most people will move around in cars and trucks. And not much else.
The truth can be found in the budget: there is no money for transit in Gateway. There is no line item for the buses that the signs say may come at some unspecified time in the future. As Jordan realistically notes: “Transit is the second-best option, of course, but that is wholly dependent on the network available, of which the South Fraser suffers greatly.”
That begs the question: why is there an inadequate transit network south of the Fraser? In the world of auto dependence, transit doesn’t come second; it doesn’t come at all.
Or at least not as something that can be affordably integrated into a frequent transit network – the foundation of TransLink’s strategy south of the Fraser. TransLink has not only put its unfunded Transport 2040 plan on hold, it’s also proposing to rationalize the transit system, to transfer resources away from places where service demand is low to places of higher demand where it is needed.
Without enlightened leadership, these are the issues that could tear the region apart. The good news is that there is the prospect of enlightened leadership – and, helpfully, it comes from Langley.
In this case, from the City of Langley.
Mayor Peter Fassbender and his council have been overseeing the maturation of the City of Langley – four square miles – into a more truly urban centre. The vision is apparent in the multistorey condos and townhouses replacing decaying ranchers from a previous era. The city just won an award for excellence in urban planning from the Planning Institute of BC, and, no question, the mayor sees Langley City’s as a key centre in a regional frequent transit network – already, with Willoughby, one of the largest retail “downtowns” in Metro Vancouver.
Fassbender is chairman of the TransLink Mayor’s Council at a time of temporary stability and a willingness to listen to new ideas. He believes TransLink and the province will be able to work out a realistic way to fund Transport 2040. And he may be able to bring the recalcitrant municipalities along.
Langley is the future of the fastest-growing part of this region. Leaders like Bateman and Fassbender are not afraid of urbanity; they do not want their communities to be auto-dependent. They’re not stuck in the suburbs of the 20th century. There’s is a world of “and.”
Gateway, however, is under construction, and therefore is winning. If its vision prevails, if the frequent transit network languishes, south of the Fraser will still have its new roads, new bridges, new interchanges and new HOV lanes. And a few isolated places, like Fort Langley, to get away from it.
You will, however, have to drive there.