Surrey’s road to the future stuck in the past

On the southern fringe of Bear Creek Park is Surrey’s political Ground Zero: a dusty moustache strip of land that was once the city’s dump.
Like all political hotspots, it is Gaza Stripped in a strategic position.
On either sides of the patch is 84th Avenue and on both sides of 84th Avenue is a backflow of automobiles, bike and pedestrian traffic yearning to get to the other side without having to detour at King George or 140th Street.
This week, Surrey city council voted 6-3 against the proposal — its third in 10 years. Naturally most residents on 84th — along with a small group called Friends of Bear Creek Park — were opposed.
“I honestly believe there are other actions we need to look at,” said Mayor Dianne Watts.
“We need to go back to the table to find different solutions to this problem and take everything into consideration.”
First term city councillor Barinder Rasode was spearheading the drive amongst a number of her council colleagues to connect 84th. The city plan was to pave a roughly one mile stretch of road which would run primarily through a Hydro corridor, thereby minimizing any impact on the flora and fauna calling this strip home.
While the battle was as much about disturbing the tranquility of 84th Avenue — one of Surreys major arterial roads — it is invariably only a smaller battle in a much bigger narrative about what Surrey is and where it is going — or rather where it is being pulled to by the tides.
Connecting the two halves of 84th Avenue is not a new idea. In fact, it has been on the table for almost 25 years, back when Wayne Gretzky was still an Edmonton Oiler.
The topic has born witness to hundreds of debates by at least four city mayors and dozens of Surrey councillors. And as the proverbial ‘issue to sleep on’, it has endured as many slumbering nights as the sheets on a King George motel single.
The inability to move past the stalemate is endemic of Surrey’s bedroom community past, and its rubbing elbows machine-politics. It is also a symptom of a municipality that has struggled to come to terms with its ballooning mass.
What has resulted is the schizophrenic tale of two cities. One is a refuge with birds and wildlife, hammock neighbourhoods a world apart from the urban clog and decay of areas like South Vancouver and the West End. The other is congestion on par with an anthill.
Take 84th and 88th Avenues for example. Drive down 140th Street and turn left onto 84th Avenue and you are likely to see kids on BMX bikes coasting aimlessly across a quiet arterial road. It is practically as wide as the Champs D’Eleysee and serene as a zen garden.
Walk one kilometre north to 88th and you have a highway posing as an avenue. Trucks, cars, pedestrians, bikes, kids, grandparents, dogs, cats and all other forms of sentient life compete for space on Surrey version of the Grand Trunk Highway. Add roving livestock and one might think they are in Asia rather than in B.C.
For Rasode, a pragmatic mother of three and also a Council neophyte, enough is enough. “This is not a question of if the connecting road should be paved. Surrey needs better connectivity. It is a major safety issue. Because of the heavy flow of traffic on 88th, police and fire fighters are being delayed in getting to emergency calls.”
She will live to fight another day.
The fact is over 85,000 cars pass through 88th and King George each day. During rush hour, vehicles often wait more than four lights to pass through. Firefighters trying to rush out of Hall No. 1 — the 3rd busiest in Canada — are regularly delayed on emergency calls and placed into danger by having to slalom upstream through oncoming traffic.
Her opinion is in harmony with the vast majority of the city’s residents.
A recent Ipsos-Reid phone survey involving a sample of 600 residents found 80 per cent of respondents strongly agree or agree with extending 84th Avenue if the environmental impacts to creeks, wildlife, and trees are minimized. A survey in 2000 indicated that 67 per cent of respondents fully supported the project, and again approximately 80 per cent supported the project if there were no major environmental impacts to Bear Creek Park.
Yet the matter of building a one-mile stretch of road — nothing more than a very long driveway considering the vastness of Surrey — with all its obvious safety and traffic benefits, still remains on a knife’s edge, showing just how the city’s riches of open land, and development friendliness has become a thorn in its political side.
Today the city has over 400,000 residents — in 10 years it will surpass Vancouver as the largest city in B.C. It’s a far cry from its sleepy hollow past — the Patullo Bridge connecting the two sides of the river wasn’t opened until 1937 and it wasn’t until the 1980’s when city really became a destination as immigrants seeking out affordable housing poured into the municipality.
In a matter of a short number of years, Surrey, which was always Vancouver’s poor country cousin and the foil for her vulgar jokes, became a little tiger powered by immigrant labour and the fastest growing municipality in Canada. That growth has also generated the classic social problems associated with rapid expansion.
Drugs and gun violence have been difficult to control. The city’s healthcare facilities like Surrey Hospital have struggled to keep pace with demand. And the transportation infrastructure has lagged behind with both the Port Mann and Patullo Bridges needing complete overhauls.
And then there is 84th Avenue.
It is Surrey in a Petri dish: a culture clinging to the belief that it is still a bedroom community. It depicts a city that, like an overwhelmed teenage parent, doesn’t know if it’s ready for the future and feels it better to evade than face the thought of changing diapers.
That sense of hesitation has come with a heavy cost. As 84th Avenue remains a blithe oasis of tranquility, like a street that time forgot, the human toll at 88th and King George rises.
There were over 200 accidents at that one intersection alone over the previous year — nearly one every working day — making it one of the most dangerous crossings in the province.
“Every month we add 1,000 new people to the city. We have two border crossings, a port, and four major bridges connecting Surrey to the rest of the region. We are the gateway to the Fraser Valley,” said Rasode.
Looking forward into the future, she knows clearly the direction the municipality is going, “Surrey is a city in its own right. We are not a suburb.”
(Parts of this editorial appeared in an article written in The Vancouver Sun by Jagdeesh Mann.)