Significant Wins for the Transportation and Mobility Strategy
Township of Langley
At the end of February, the 250 page Transportation and Mobility Strategy (TMS) for the Township of Langley that has been in development since Fall 2023 finally had it’s first draft released for the public to read.
This has been a long wait, with many important items often postponed in council chambers to wait and see what the TMS had to say about it, such as the removal of slip lanes at 88 Ave and 208 Street, which we had advocated for as part our campaign.
At the council meeting where it was presented, adoption was postponed for 2 weeks to gather some intermediary feedback before the final round of engagement.
Advocates sprang into action. I want to give a particularly big shout out to Barry Azevedo who led the charge, in addition to Louise Smith, along with all of the other volunteer advocates from HUB Cycling Langley, for their hard work compiling a document which identified key issues. They were even able to arrange an impromptu in-person meeting to provide feedback.
Similarly, our organization compiled a document in response which suggested changes to TMS which was provided to Councillor Michael Pratt and shared in our group chat for feedback and revisions.
The response to this feedback at yesterday’s council meeting was overwhelmingly positive. Councillor Pratt brought forward 12 amendments to the draft TMS, all of which were adopted, with the final amended version passing unanimously, so we extend our thanks to all of council for supporting these changes.
Several amendments aligned with recommendations from both us and HUB: slow streets moved from a perpetual pilot to actual implementation with physical changes, the roundabout-first policy expanded from rural-only to include urban intersections, and signal coordination elevated from something to “consider studying” into a committed action with corridor identification and transit signal priority.
A roundabout-first policy being universally adopted will probably be the biggest shake up to the Township’s engineering department in decades. We have seen continual institutional resistance to their implementation despite roundabouts being a proven strategy to move traffic efficiently, used widely throughout Europe and has even seeing widespread adoption in select North American cities like Carmel, Indiana, which has over 150 roundabouts. Not only are they much safer, roundabouts move about 50% more traffic per hour than a standard signalized intersection1.
Similarly the initiative looking into signal coordination, described as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), is significant. This technology can network traffic signals to optimize traffic flow, creating what is known as a “Green wave” as this video from Kerleem explains:
While it may seem strange for us to be praising something that helps drivers get around more quickly, from a Strong Towns perspective both roundabouts and ITS are powerful tools to help escape a classic “strong towns trap”; they can reduce the incentive and pressure to widen roads by moving more vehicles with less space. The hope is that these initiatives will help move us away from this path of expensive continual road expansion we have seen for the past decade or more in the Township, to a more people-oriented development model.
From our submission specifically, protected intersections were adopted as the default design standard for new urban intersections, leading pedestrian intervals were flipped so the onus is now on justifying why an intersection shouldn’t have one, greenway condition assessments and prioritized gap-filling using community engagement data were added as short-term actions with trail lighting identification included, and mid-block crossings changed from “explore” to “implement.”
HUB Cycling Langley also identified important issues we did not and saw significant wins. 196 Street was moved from medium-term to short-term priority to connect to the Willowbrook SkyTrain station, several map corrections were adopted where cycling facilities had been inaccurately shown as existing when they weren’t, 24 Avenue and Robertson Crescent were added as cycling routes, the Campbell Valley Regional Park trail extension was included, and cycle tracks were removed from the strategy based on user safety concerns HUB had raised. HUB also drew attention to the surprisingly high per-unit cost the Township had quoted for maze gate removal, noting that other municipalities like Coquitlam have completed removals for as little as $500 per gate. That item didn’t make it into the amendments, but it’s now on the record. All map changes passed unanimously.
The Mayor also amended the resolution so the TMS goes out for public engagement “for additional council consideration” rather than “for adoption,” which means there is still an opportunity to push on items that didn’t make it through this round.
That being said, it’s important to note that even without these council approved amendments, TMS often sets the right tone. A key acknowledgement in the TMS is that the Township cannot build its way out of congestion through road widening - “continuing to expand driving infrastructure across the network would deliver diminishing returns and is constrained by limited right-of-way, cost, and community impacts” (Action D1.2). The TMS even provides updated road cross sections that reduce motor vehicle lane widths and allocate more space to active transportation (Action S2.1) this part of the strategy even provides actual specific core updates to the Subdivision and Development Servicing Bylaw, which takes this specific action beyond just a wishlist into being directly implementable.
We were also pleased to see slip lane removal/safety treatment discussed (right turn channelization / Action S3.2), which will hopefully allow for the 208 Street and 88 Avenue sliplane removal to be reconsidered at council once TMS is adopted.
However not all of the TMS is immediately actionable, in fact roughly half the plan requires a study before anything more can happen, and that remains a core concern, for example filling the gaps in cycling network required further study and then requiring a new capital project to complete it. The amendments close some of those gaps, but not all of them.
The biggest surprise from TMS was an acknowledgement that the Culture in the Township of Langley needs to change.
As we’ve discussed before, grassroots organizing plays a vital role in shaping the culture of a community, but the Township of Langley has to also be on board with cultural change at the institutional level, so it’s encouraging to see this being discussed.
There’s also still work left to do. Both our organization and HUB Cycling Langley wanted to see a dedicated quick-build program with annual funding. A key item from our document was formally acknowledging 208 Street for transit priority treatment, and HUB’s Student Cycling Corridors concept, where every school in the Township would have at least four safe cycling approach routes (two north-south, two east-west) within a 5 km radius, prioritized for quick-build safety improvements to enable students to cycle to school and reduce congestion around school sites. We’re hoping these outstanding issues can gain traction during the upcoming Round 4 engagement.
Strong Towns Langley is a community group dedicated to making Langley, British Columbia a better place. We advocate for incremental development, sustainable transportation solutions, housing accessibility, public spaces, and responsible growth strategies. Our group is part of the larger Strong Towns movement, focusing on creating financially resilient and people-oriented communities.
To learn more visit https://strongtownslangley.org
Demir, H. G., & Demir, Y. K. (2020). A comparison of traffic flow performance of roundabouts and signalized intersections: a case study in Nigde. The Open Transportation Journal, 14(1), 120–132. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874447802014010120
Thank you for taking the time to summarize and keep us informed.