Thank you for clicking! I wanted to quickly explain why this BRT project is so important, why I’m so excited about it, and why we’re getting it as (relatively) quickly as we are. When Translink reaffirmed its 10-year priorities in February 2023, this Council was near the very beginning of our term, having been inaugurated only 4 months prior. In this announcement, they only briefly mentioned that Langley was being considered for a future BRT line, likely in the second half of the 10-year priorities’s funding window, meaning planning of the route likely wouldn’t formally begin until 2028, with completion sometime after 2030. For one of the most rapidly growing municipalities in the Province, with a community such as Willoughby starved for adequate transit service, this didn’t feel good enough. Yes, Langley was going to be getting SkyTrain by the end of the 2020s, but realistically, this investment will do very little to help Langley-ites get around Langley easier, but that’s another story.

A significant reason why Langley was not being considered for BRT in the first 5-year window was because of the low ridership projections based on the current and planned density at the time along the 200 Street Corridor. Translink wouldn’t be interested in making an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars without knowing that the route would actually be well used. Despite this, it was identified by some on Council that it would be a wasted opportunity to begin building a robust transit network in Langley if there wasn’t a BRT line serving Langley’s most populated area that could connect to SkyTrain and future improved bus service. In order to avoid wasting this opportunity, we had to find a way to show Translink that this corridor would be a worthwhile investment. I began working on a motion that would ask staff to explore a potential process for increasing the densities around certain cross streets that I imagined might be eventual spots where there would be BRT stations. The purpose would be to boost the residential density along the line and build the business case for Langley’s BRT line.
Because this was so important to me, I knew I would need the support of at least 4 other members of Council to have the motion eventually passed. In order to increase the chances of this, I reached out to the Mayor to get his thoughts. Unbeknownst to me, he had been working on a motion that also addressed the 200 Street Corridor that was more expansive in what it would direct staff to explore. It’s not my place to share his motivations for wanting to create a new vision for the 200 Street Corridor, but what mattered to us both was that it was anchored by a new public transportation investment that would dramatically shape Langley’s future. Therefore, there was the basis to work together on the eventual motion that went to Council, and which was approved in the end.
This started the process of creating the new 200 Street 2040 vision, which calls for 47,500 new homes, over 58,000 new jobs, and almost 1,000,000 square feet of new retail space. This will be absolutely transformational for Langley, and delivering this new vision will require a lot of work. It will require a new and innovative approach to building enough schools for the new kids moving into these new homes. It will require intense advocacy to the Province in order to continue investing in Langley Memorial Hospital, as well as to open urgent care centres and other healthcare facilities. It will require investing in new parks and new recreation facilities, as well as drastically improving both pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, since if the car is the only way for people to effectively get around town, then traffic congestion will be even more of a nightmare. It won’t be easy to deliver on the exciting promise of 200 Street 2040, but it is possible, and it is possible because of the efforts of this Council to make the Langley-Haney Place BRT a viable investment in the first tranche of BRT projects.
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