Editor: We’ve heard just in the past week that as part of Metro Vancouver’s forthcoming regional growth strategy, Surrey City Centre will be deemed the new ‘metro centre’ for all of the Fraser Valley.
This is great news — it’s high-time that people in the Valley were provided with a closer downtown centre. We can only hope that this ‘metro centre’ will include lots more local jobs, a sports stadium and great performance and concert spaces. For far too long, people in Surrey and Langley have had to drive to Vancouver, through traffic and over bridges, to get to work, to sports games, and to shows.
People from all parts of the Fraser Valley are going to want to get to this new downtown core without getting stuck in traffic. There is a huge need for faster, more frequent, and more reliable transit from Langley Centre and Cloverdale, going in to the SkyTrain station and bus loop at Surrey Central. The #502 bus service just isn’t good enough, especially given the rapidly-growing population in Cloverdale and Langley.
The most cost-efficient way to bring people from Langley and Cloverdale into the Surrey metro centre would be to revive the interurban line and implement a system of passenger rail.
To build a system of at-grade passenger rail, it would cost between $6 to $7 million per kilometre, as compared to SkyTrain’s $100 to $233 million per kilometre. Because of the lower cost, passenger rail can probably be implemented much more quickly (maybe within a year).
Hopefully the Surrey metro centre concept can provide an impetus for moving forward with passenger rail for the Valley, at a time when everyone wants better public transit down Fraser Highway.
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From the Langley Times on May 14, 2008.
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