Opinion: The new public transit overhaul South of Fraser needs | Daily Hive

Opinion: The new public transit the South of Fraser of Metro Vancouver needs

South of Fraser's new public transit. (Mountain Valley Express)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Lee Haber, who is an urban and transportation planner and the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Mountain Valley Express, a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring world-class regional rail to the South Coast of British Columbia.

Anybody who has a kid attending school in a portable classroom or has waited for care for hours at an overcrowded hospital knows this in their bones: Surrey and the rest of the South of Fraser sub-region of Metro Vancouver is growing at an explosive rate.

From 2016 to 2021, Surrey grew 9.7 per cent while the Township of Langley grew a staggering 13 per cent. It’s not surprising then that basic institutions and infrastructure are being stretched to their limits.

The same is true for public transit. Ridership in the South of Fraser has grown 22 per cent over pre-pandemic levels compared to only 9 per cent for the Burrard Peninsula. With demand for public transit at an all-time high and Surrey projected to reach over a million residents by 2046, the City has put out a call for a future public transit plan. They state that this plan should serve South Surrey, improve east-west connectivity, and connect the region’s major hubs.

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Why make a long-term plan now? After all, TransLink is in the process of planning two new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes for the region along King George Boulevard and 200th Street.

Though projects like BRT can quickly and cost-effectively address current needs, what’s the plan longer term? If we fail to plan further into the future, we risk building expensive infrastructure that will need to be replaced because it is insufficient and having new developments obstruct future public transit corridors and stations — making later implementation much more expensive.

So let’s turn our eyes to the future and imagine what a public transit system that addresses these three objectives and serves South of Fraser’s growing population would look like.

Understanding the South of Fraser

To build a public transit network of the future for the South of Fraser, we need to understand its geography. The South of Fraser is an expansive region of almost 700 sq. km (almost six times larger than the City of Vancouver) that is divided into three built-up areas by the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR):

Surrey Rise: Whalley, Guildford, Newton, Fleetwood, and North Delta
Langley Rise: City of Langley, Township of Langley, Clayton, and Cloverdale
Semiahmoo: South Surrey and White Rock

The gap between these built-up areas can extend up to around five km. This is important because certain modes of transportation are better suited for crossing this agricultural expanse.

It also makes connecting the region’s population centres challenging.

Three main urban areas of the South of Fraser. (Mountain Valley Express)

According to Metro Vancouver, there are 13 areas in the South of Fraser where growth should be concentrated:

Regional Centres (2): Surrey Metro Centre and Langley Centre
Municipal Town Centres (7): Guildford, Newton, Fleetwood, Cloverdale, Semiahmoo, Willoughby, and Aldergrove
Frequent Transit Development Areas (4): 104 Avenue, West Fleetwood, East Clayton, and Carvolth

These designated population centres (and North Delta, which probably should be officially included as one in the future) are arranged roughly in a grid, meaning that our future public transit network will require a grid of routes utilizing important north-south corridors (Scott Road, King George Boulevard, 152 Street, and 200 Street) and east-west corridors (104 Avenue, Highway 1, Fraser Highway, 88 Avenue, 56/64 Avenue, Southern Railway Corridor, and 24 Avenue).

Metro Vancouver Regional District

A rapid transit network for the South of Fraser

Given the geography of the region and our stated objectives of serving the South of Surrey — improving east-west connectivity and connecting the region’s hubs — this is our proposed public transit network.

South of Fraser’s new public transit. (Mountain Valley Express)

Here is a breakdown of what the network consists of:

Regional Rail: Trains that serve longer-distance trips and go up to 160 km/hr. There would be two regional rail branches that would serve the South of Fraser:
- Abbotsford Branch: Would pass through the South of Fraser along 104 Avenue and Highway 1 with stations at Surrey Central and Guildford.
- Semiahmoo Branch: Would diverge from the Abbotsford Branch at Surrey Central and continue to Semiahmoo Centre with stations at 88 Avenue, Newton Centre, 64 Avenue, and 32 Avenue.
Rapid Transit: Trains meant to serve local trips with a top speed of 80 to 100 km/hr:
- Surrey-Langley SkyTrain: A branch of the Expo Line that extends to Langley City Centre that is currently under construction.
- King George Rapid Transit: A rapid transit line that would share infrastructure with regional rail that would extend from Surrey Central to 64th Avenue.
- Semiahmoo Rapid Transit: A rapid transit line that would share infrastructure with regional rail that would serve the Semiahmoo Peninsula.
- The Fraser Valley Arc: A lengthy rapid transit line that would orbit around Surrey, Langley, and eventually terminate in Maple Ridge. This route would share a tunnel section with regional rail along 104 Avenue.
- The Murrayville Extension: This would be a branch of the Fraser Valley Arc that is primarily meant to connect Langley City Centre with regional rail at Carvolth and would extend to Murrayville.

It should be noted that none of this is possible unless significant work is done to bring our public transit costs in line with those in places like Italy, Spain, and South Korea, where similarly complex projects are built from one-third to one-fifth of the cost here.

Research has shown that most of this cost reduction can be achieved by increasing the level of in-house planning expertise and changing how we procure these projects.

Example of regional rail: S-Bahn in Cologne, Germany. (Markus Mainka/Shutterstock)

green timbers station surrey langley skytrain f

Artistic rendering of Green Timbers Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain. (Government of BC)

translink brt bus rapid transit station stop f

Artistic rendering of a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station. (TransLink)

The role of Regional Rail

The South of Fraser is an expansive region that extends almost 25 km north-south and 25 and 35 km east-west. The best way to connect population centres spanning such a large area and separated by large swathes of agricultural land is to employ a faster mode of transport. This is necessary if we want public transit travel times to be competitive with driving.

The Abbotsford Regional Rail Branch would connect stations at Surrey Central, Guildford, and Carvolth (and is part of Mountain Valley Express’s official regional rail vision for the South Coast of B.C.). Currently, it takes 37 minutes to get from Surrey Central to Carvolth using public transit and 24 minutes if driving, but regional rail would shorten this trip to just eight minutes.

Though not as impressive, there would also be significant travel savings in the north-south direction with the Semiahmoo Branch. Currently, it takes almost an hour to get to Surrey Central from Semiahmoo Centre. The new King George BRT will shorten this to 40 minutes, roughly as fast as driving. If we extended SkyTrain (creating a new branch from King George Station as some have proposed), it would be able to cover the entire distance in 27 minutes.

Regional rail would be even faster at 17 minutes.

South of Fraser’s new public transit. (Mountain Valley Express)

It also wouldn’t be much more expensive to build a line to South Surrey that accommodates rapid transit and regional rail vs. a SkyTrain extension. We estimate only a 33 per cent premium would be required. This is because much of the infrastructure could be shared between regional rail and rapid transit trains, with rapid transit trains acting as a local service and regional rail trains an express service.

It also wouldn’t be limited in capacity; since it would be a branch of the Expo Line, a Skytrain extension along King George Boulevard would be limited to trains every six minutes. As an independent network, a combined rapid transit and regional rail line wouldn’t suffer the same encumbrance.

Lastly, if we’re extending rapid transit to South Surrey, we should consider extending it further south into White Rock, closer to White Rock Pier, a regional attraction, and Semiahmoo First Nation.

Connecting the nodes with the Fraser Valley Arc

The two regional rail branches and rapid transit in King George and Semiahmoo alone are not enough to connect the South of Fraser’s hubs and improve east-west connectivity. This is where the Fraser Valley Arc comes in.

Most rapid transit networks have some form of orbital route that connects regional hubs with each other as opposed to radial lines that connect regional hubs with the central hub (e.g. downtown Vancouver). When these two lines are used in conjunction, they can provide a rapid transit network that is useful for most residents.

South of Fraser’s new public transit. (Mountain Valley Express)

Whereas the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension and regional rail branches act as the radial lines for the South of Fraser, the Fraser Valley Arc serves as the orbital route, connecting Guildford, North Delta, Newton, Cloverdale, Willowbrook, Willoughby, Carvolth, and Walnut Grove together. It would serve the rapidly growing 200th Street corridor and enhance east-west connectivity with a section from North Delta to Cloverdale that would utilize 72 Avenue and the Southern Railway corridor. It could be extended north of the Fraser River to Maple Ridge and connect with a regional rail branch at Maple Meadows.

To complete the line, an extension to Murrayville would be added off of the 200 Street section. This would provide service to Langley Memorial Hospital and allow City of Langley residents to access regional rail without requiring a transfer.

To round out our network, a few additional rapid bus routes should be considered. One route along 88 Avenue would run east-west through North Surrey before heading north to Guildford (and could potentially be extended further north to Coquitlam). A second route would run south along 200 Street to serve Brookswood, Campbell Heights, and Fern Ridge before heading west to Sunnyside in South Surrey.

How would this proposed network change mobility in the South of Fraser? Below is a grid showing how public transit travel times compare with driving travel times between population centres in the South of Fraser (Red = transit slower, Green = transit faster).

Here is what it looks like now:

Existing public transit travel times compared with driving times. (Mountain Valley Express)

Here is what it would look like with the proposed network built:

Proposed new public transit travel times compared with driving times. (Mountain Valley Express)

The difference is night and day. For many users, public transit will go from being a “last resort” to the preferred way of getting around. This is what’s needed to not only serve a growing population but to get more of the population to use sustainable transport.

You may look at this and dismiss it as pie-in-the-sky. Such a system will indeed cost billions to build and some of these routes will have ridership initially closer to that of the Millennium Line’s Evergreen extension rather than the Expo Line. However, remember that we are thinking long-term, and the South of Fraser is expected to have a population of 1.5 million in 20 years. There are cities in Europe, such as Rennes and Lausanne, that have metro systems with multiple routes that are smaller than Surrey’s current population.

We could use land value capture mechanisms so that growth helps pay for the public transit that will serve it.

Most importantly, we need to ditch the small-town mindset and start building the public transit this region deserves today. Wayne Gretzky famously said that you “go to where the puck is going,” not where it happens to be right now.

It’s time we started “playing to win” instead of for a tie.

Long-term future skyline of Surrey City Centre. (Invest Surrey/Downtown Surrey BIA)

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