Surrey Langley Skytrain - Expo Line Extension | Proposed

[Sheba]

Instead of just obsessing about Skytrain, we should consider more frequency on routes and more RapidBus routes SoF. Where would you upgrade to those routes? Certainly Scott Road, extending King George down to White Rock, Fraser Hwy from Fleetwood to Langley Centre (until the Phase 2 of the Skytrain is done) and a combo of the 501 and 595 in Langley have already been proposed for RapidBus.

[rpvan]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Instead of just obsessing about Skytrain, we should consider more frequency on routes and more RapidBus routes SoF. Where would you upgrade to those routes? Certainly Scott Road, extending King George down to White Rock, Fraser Hwy from Fleetwood to Langley Centre (until the Phase 2 of the Skytrain is done) and a combo of the 501 and 595 in Langley have already been proposed for RapidBus.

The entire bus system in Surrey/Delta/Langley needs a big overhaul, especially with the skytrain extension not far off now. This has been mentioned many times but shifting to a grid system similar to Vancouver's would be ideal. This shift wouldn't be a difficult proposition since all major arterials in Surrey are already oriented either N-S or W-E.

Major N-S streets like 120th, 128th, 132nd, KGB, 144th, 152nd and 160th all could feature a similar fast and frequent bus system/configuration as Vancouver has with Main, Fraser, Victoria, etc. Same with major W-E streets as well (108th, 104th, 96th, 88th, 72nd, 64th).

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

there is a reason when you look at TransLink's #s that SoF bleeds money where as NoF doesn't. NoF is always subsidizing SoF. yet they complain they don't have enough.

personally, i think TransLink should only be responsible for SkyTrain to Langley and the rest of SoF transit should be a different responsibility of those cities. then maybe they'll learn that they aren't hard done by. maybe that will lower the TransLink tax i pay so that NoF people can subsidize SoF people...

but that is extreme of course. but i get tired of hearing their wah wah wahs all the time.

Do you suggest we restructure TransLink and have it in charge of major routes (SkyTrain, Seabus, WCE, R-lines, major bus routes such as the 99/250/555/620/701/any that gets a significant amount of ridership and serves multiple municipalities), and give the responsibility for the lesser routes (those that only serve one municipality) to their respective municipalities?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by cganuelas1995

Do you suggest we restructure TransLink and have it in charge of major routes (SkyTrain, Seabus, WCE, R-lines, major bus routes such as the 99/250/555/620/701/any that gets a significant amount of ridership and serves multiple municipalities), and give the responsibility for the lesser routes (those that only serve one municipality) to their respective municipalities?

That would be a good way to kill every bus route between Vancouver and Burnaby and across the North Shore. Though some light rail NIMBYs might consider that to be a good thing.

Originally Posted by rpvan

The entire bus system in Surrey/Delta/Langley needs a big overhaul, especially with the skytrain extension not far off now. This has been mentioned many times but shifting to a grid system similar to Vancouver's would be ideal. This shift wouldn't be a difficult proposition since all major arterials in Surrey are already oriented either N-S or W-E.

I think that's the end goal. But if I'm TransLink, I don't want to remap the network completely when the SkyTrain only reaches Fleetwood; likewise, I don't want to remap the network partway, only to have to rip up every bus stop 5-10 years later when the Langley extension starts.

[nname]

Originally Posted by rpvan

Major N-S streets like 120th, 128th, 132nd, KGB, 144th, 152nd and 160th all could feature a similar fast and frequent bus system/configuration as Vancouver has with Main, Fraser, Victoria, etc. Same with major W-E streets as well (108th, 104th, 96th, 88th, 72nd, 64th).

The main issue is... is there ridership to support it? Will they gain or lose ridership if they deviate from the main destination/population center (ie. Surrey Central) in order to make the grid? In fact, most of the roads you listed already have grid-service routes, and many of these routes such as 375, 364, and 388 was always planned to be high-frequency FTN route. But currently there is jut no ridership to support anything beyond a 30min service...

Vancouver was lucky because it have Downtown on the north end, and UBC on the west end, so most route and start/finish from at least one key destination. To make a full grid out of Surrey, you'll just end up having all the routes going from nowhere to nowhere.

[Dengler Avenue]

(Digression) And that's the issue with Richmond too. Make it grid-like, and everyone will probably start driving to Richmond Centre.

a combo of the 501 and 595 in Langley have already been proposed for RapidBus

Keep in mind that 595 goes on 208th Street now. IMO 200th Street has so little going on that the best that can happen is to have 501 run every 15 minutes in PM rush all the way to Langley Centre (as opposed to the current 15 up to Carvolth then 30 for the remainder) and semi-hourly service on weekend evenings.
As for 595, I guess 208th Street can be further densified and drive up its ridership?

Ps: Does anyone know why 501 runs every 20 minutes on Saturday midday?

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

I think that's the end goal. But if I'm TransLink, I don't want to remap the network completely when the SkyTrain only reaches Fleetwood; likewise, I don't want to remap the network partway, only to have to rip up every bus stop 5-10 years later when the Langley extension starts.

I'll agree not "completely" but there's plenty of Surrey routes they could change once the first phase of the Skytrain is complete. Obviously the Langley routes would have to wait until the Skytrain gets to Langley Centre.

Originally Posted by nname

The main issue is... is there ridership to support it? Will they gain or lose ridership if they deviate from the main destination/population center (ie. Surrey Central) in order to make the grid?

How about a route that travels between a destination / population center and a Skytrain station - like elsewhere in the region? A fairly grid-like system would come about from that.

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

Keep in mind that 595 goes on 208th Street now. IMO 200th Street has so little going on that the best that can happen is to have 501 run every 15 minutes in PM rush all the way to Langley Centre (as opposed to the current 15 up to Carvolth then 30 for the remainder) and semi-hourly service on weekend evenings.

The images of future RapidBus routes has shown one for the 595 from Pitt Meadows to Carvolth Exchange and then the 501 south to either Langley Centre or Willowbrook.

[Dengler Avenue]

The images of future RapidBus routes has shown one for the 595 from Pitt Meadows to Carvolth Exchange and then the 501 south to either Langley Centre or Willowbrook.

Okay, that might work. At least it sounds doable, even with the nothingness on 200th Street between Langley Event Centre and 68 Avenue.

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

That would be a good way to kill every bus route between Vancouver and Burnaby and across the North Shore. Though some light rail NIMBYs might consider that to be a good thing.

Vancouver and Burnaby and all the municipalities in the North Shore might have to amalgamate then in that case. Imagine that.

[Tvisforme]

Originally Posted by cganuelas1995

Vancouver and Burnaby and all the municipalities in the North Shore might have to amalgamate then in that case. Imagine that.

"Good morning, this is West Vancouver Municipal Hall, how can I help you?"

"Hello West Van, it's the District. I've got the City here and we were thinking it would be a great idea to amalgamate. If we do, maybe Vancouver and Burnaby will join in as well. What do you think?"

<click>

[cganuelas1995]

Originally Posted by Tvisforme

"Good morning, this is West Vancouver Municipal Hall, how can I help you?"

"Hello West Van, it's the District. I've got the City here and we were thinking it would be a great idea to amalgamate. If we do, maybe Vancouver and Burnaby will join in as well. What do you think?"

<click>

I think we'll be okay without them. They don't like anything it seems.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by cganuelas1995

I think we'll be okay without them. They don't like anything it seems.

You're not getting it. Vancouver/Burnaby/Surrey/Coquitlam et al don't like to share. They're going to keep all their buses and the depots for themselves, to hell with the rest of the metro - just like with the taxi licenses and the libraries and the police departments.

Want to go to BCIT from King Ed Station? Tough sh*t, the 25 stops at Boundary. Wait for the one on the Burnaby end.

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

This is the fundamental problem in Surrey - beyond the King George Skytrain terminus it's essentially a huge, sprawling residential suburb with a few pockets of moderately higher density. You can't justify rapid transit to people's houses, you need large centres of employment, education, etc. to drive the ridership levels that justify the investment.

No, that's not it. If we go by that logic then there wouldn't have been a justification for the original Expo Line in the 1980s. At that time both Surrey (Whalley) and Coquitlam were basically the same kinds of sprawling residential suburbs - Whalley at the time had less population and jobs than Langley City has today in 2020. Yet we don't consider the outcome of having built these SkyTrain lines to be a failure in any way, am I right?

What has held back the South of Fraser is the popularity of rail/rapid transit proposals that fudged up context or put ideology before practicality. We collectively spent (and effectively wasted) time and energy on these ideas instead of actually getting around to building anything practical and tangibly useful. While you might surmise that I'm talking about a lot of previous light rail ideas (ahem interurban, ahem SNG), I'm actually also talking about SkyTrain proposals. Remember the 2008 provincial transit plan map? The eastward alignment and then the diagonal straight through Fleetwood neighbourhoods? Blegh. (It was that map that drove Dianne Watts nuts - rightfully so - and made her set us on course for a future with street-running LRTs in the first place).

This is a large part of what I mean when I suggest that we need to look at the KGB context as Downtown Surrey to South Surrey. Instead, we've been looking at KGB as Downtown Surrey to Newton Town Centre. One thing that bothered me a LOT about SNG LRT is that the proposed route actually had the LRT turn off of KGB and terminate within some future plaza without any clear ability to extend further - a blatant attempt to appeal to aesthetics rather than actually thinking for the long-term of Surrey as a city.

If the city, the region, local community leaders and business leaders hadn't spent so much time and energy forwarding the SNG LRT idea, we would both SLS and the planning for a proper rapid transit expansion from downtown Surrey to South Surrey (specifically, Semiahmoo Town Centre) underway. By the way, the Semiahmoo TC area (152 St and 16 Ave) actually has some decent density built up around it today, and (!!!) there is a LOT more density in the cards (see here, here).



I'm going to go ahead and say it (a certain Newton restaurant owner is going to want to shoot me for this POV), but Newton Town Centre (at KGB/72nd) is over-hyped and over-emphasized by local community and business leaders. The area definitely needs attention as it's suffered from years of neglect and lack of leadership, but I can't really find the reason why Newton TC needs emphasis. To summarize what Newton TC has today: a rec centre/arena/pool, a library, major big-box supermarkets, a transit exchange, and a thriving commercial district. Nearby Scottsdale/Strawberry Hill (Scott and 72nd) has nearly all of the same amenities if not even more. I would go so far as to saying Scott and 72nd is more recognized, visited, and well known in this region than Newton TC is (and I'm not just saying this because that area has Krispy Kreme's ). That area has an established reputation for being a gathering place (as we saw recently during the Canucks' Stanley Cup Playoff run) and is arguably better positioned to act as a 'downtown' for the overall Newton area.

That's not to say Newton TC doesn't have the potential to turn into something great and significant, but I think ultimately we should think of Newton TC as a 'temporary terminus' for a future line to South Surrey (similar to how Fleetwood has become a 'temporary terminus' for a line to Langley). For one, having a full corridor served will ultimately serve to make Newton TC even stronger. But also, the Semiahmoo/'Downtown South Surrey' ideas I've seen make all of the ideas I've seen for Newton TC look tiny.

[nname]

Originally Posted by Sheba

How about a route that travels between a destination / population center and a Skytrain station - like elsewhere in the region? A fairly grid-like system would come about from that.

Imagine people live in 132nd Street take the bus and miss Newton by a block, and end up in Gateway instead of Surrey Central because the bus need to stay in a grid.

Or, people live on 108th in Fraser Heights have their local bus pass north of Guildford and Surrey Central, and end up in Gateway or Scott Road because the bus need to follow the road as much as possible...

What about the 156th and 160th grid route that's so short and take maybe 5-8min end to end?

And then there are many major or secondary roads that are broken into 2 or 3 pieces... how to run a grid service there?

[Migrant_Coconut]

No reason 132nd residents can't head over to King George and take the R1. Used to walk just as far in order to reach the 99, which was infinitely better than the 44/84 back in the Olympics era.

I get that Surrey's not necessarily as grid-friendly as Vancouver, but there's no reason why everything needs to go past Newton Centre. And there's no reason why we can't have straight service all the way down 88th or 96th to Fort Langley, or 152nd from Guildford to White Rock, all three of which would be enabled by the Fleetwood SkyTrain.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

No, that's not it. If we go by that logic then there wouldn't have been a justification for the original Expo Line in the 1980s.

The justification for extending Skytrain to Surrey was to provide a reliable transit option for the whole of Surrey that wasn't impacted by bridge congestion. By establishing Scott Road as a foothold and routing buses to it, you could feed Skytrain with passengers from a wide swath of Surrey.

[nname]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

No reason 132nd residents can't head over to King George and take the R1.

If everyone done the same, would there be enough demand for a bus service on 132nd at all?

And speaking of grid service... TransLink proposed a new route that strictly follow 68th Ave and miss Newton Exchange by a block to the south, and guess what's the feedback from the consultation? In the end, the route #368 will be implemented with a detour into the exchange and then back to 68th Ave. Ideally a grid service sounds nice, but it may not be what the riders really wanted.

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

I get that Surrey's not necessarily as grid-friendly as Vancouver, but there's no reason why everything needs to go past Newton Centre. And there's no reason why we can't have straight service all the way down 88th or 96th to Fort Langley, or 152nd from Guildford to White Rock, all three of which would be enabled by the Fleetwood SkyTrain.

There is already a route that run almost the entire length of 152nd -- it's the #375. I expect the route will get a frequency boost after SkyTrain and may even becomes FTN as originally planned.

The 88th and 96th always planned to have two separate cross-town routes. It is currently served by a single route #388 as an intern measure until there is enough ridership to support at least one FTN out of the routes. Look at #388 right now....

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by nname

If everyone done the same, would there be enough demand for a bus service on 132nd at all?

And speaking of grid service... TransLink proposed a new route that strictly follow 68th Ave and miss Newton Exchange by a block to the south, and guess what's the feedback from the consultation? In the end, the route #368 will be implemented with a detour into the exchange and then back to 68th Ave. Ideally a grid service sounds nice, but it may not be what the riders really wanted.

Demand might not be there now while it's still a suburb, but after ten years of densification?

Just saying, there's three different regular lines down 4th and two on Broadway - might want to consider getting ahead of the curve.

Originally Posted by nname

There is already a route that run almost the entire length of 152nd -- it's the #375. I expect the route will get a frequency boost after SkyTrain and may even becomes FTN as originally planned.

The 88th and 96th always planned to have two separate cross-town routes. It is currently served by a single route #388 as an intern measure until there is enough ridership to support at least one FTN out of the routes. Look at #388 right now....

Thanks, good to know. Guess I lost track among all the redundancies and loops (326, 335, etc).

[Dengler Avenue]

And speaking of grid service... TransLink proposed a new route that strictly follow 68th Ave and miss Newton Exchange by a block to the south, and guess what's the feedback from the consultation? In the end, the route #368 will be implemented with a detour into the exchange and then back to 68th Ave. Ideally a grid service sounds nice, but it may not be what the riders really wanted.

Interesting. If done right, 321 can be rerouted to stay on King George Boulevard immediately south of Newton Exchange.

Demand might not be there now while it's still a suburb, but after ten years of densification?

Just saying, there's three different regular lines down 4th and two on Broadway - might want to consider getting ahead of the curve.

It has always fascinated me that 4 & 7 overlap for quite a bit and likewise for 14 & 16. Maybe if Surrey gets dense enough, that kind of redundancy needs considering.
Ps: I’d think that Translink hates service duplication though.

[xd_1771]

I think a full-on Vancouver-style "grid" model is hard to realize in a city that follows a town centre model, not to mention I can't tell if it'd be appropriate in parts of Surrey regardless because of specific geography.

But, I think what a lot of people mean by "griddifying" the system SoF is to introduce more routes that orient on specific corridors and establishing those routes as primary links, versus the sometimes windy/loopy routes we've had over the last few years. Remember the old 341 before it was the 341/342? (Blegh). The 341 kind of makes sense, but the 342 is still unoptimized IMO since it has a 60th/144/loop routing and yet is expected to be the main link between Newton, Panorama, Cloverdale and Langley.

Small detours from the grid are not a big deal IMO if the detour is to connect to an exchange with transfer opportunities (unlike the old 49/Champlain Heights detour). The 368 with a routing that passes through Newton Exchange is a good compromise and it'd not necessarily be that big of a detour if the 368 returns to 68th Ave immediately via King George Blvd. Similarly I think it would be worth having the 388 route 152 -> Fraser Highway -> 88th so as to connect to the future 152 St Station. Only a single existing stop at 154 St would be missed and even then those stops are only 100m from the actual Fraser Hwy/88 Ave intersection.

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

It has always fascinated me that 4 & 7 overlap for quite a bit and likewise for 14 & 16. Maybe if Surrey gets dense enough, that kind of redundancy needs considering.
Ps: I’d think that Translink hates service duplication though.

The 4/7 wouldn't really so much fall under 'duplication' because when combined they work kind of like split tail routes. The demand on inner segments of W 4th and Powell is larger than the demand on Dunbar and Nanaimo St.

The 14/16 could be categorized the same way, but it's weird now because neither routes are actually the 'primary' routes on W Broadway and E Hastings anymore (as those corridors have the 99 B-Line and R5, and other local bus routes). They could reasonably be truncated, split, redesigned, etc. but it would be probably more acceptable/appropriate to do so once there's a greater buildout of SkyTrain along Broadway.

In Surrey 108 Ave used to have a split tail setup; the 335 operated between Central and Fleetwood (this was pre-Newton extension) and route '332' operated additionally between Central and Guildford only. This was kind of unoptimal because the 332 and 335 schedules did not synchronize (you'd have 3 buses per hour operated as hourly 332 and half-hourly 335 some times of day). Many 332 runs, however, essentially through-ran with 326 (Guildford to 156 south, 88 west, 140 north to Surrey Central), and 332-326 formed an unofficial "loop" service. The through-running was definitely also not consistent (there was even one time I had a westbound 326 that ended up converting to a 337/nonstop 104th to Surrey Central while a 335 was in the bay) but it could have been more consistent. The current setup allows for consistent 335 service (it's now 15+ mins midday on 108th) and is far better, but continuing to run a split tail w/326 would have been a good option.

Split tail done properly would probably work great on many corridors in Surrey.