Transportation Options Focused on Our Future
The North Shore transit issues aren’t new. The issue has only become more pressing and more prevalant since 2014. The reason for our worsening traffic and congestion issues stems from two main issues that consistently affect North Shore traffic.
One, the North Shore serves as a travel intersection for other communities. Whether you’re travelling, working, moving to and from the Island, moving from North Vancouver to West Vancouver, up to Squamish and Whistler, or between Burnaby, Surrey, or beyond, people commute to, from, or through the North Shore daily.
Two, the North Shore’s notable lack of transit options and alternatives exacerbates our traffic issues. We all know that a single accident can so negatively affect North Shore traffic that it ripples into our local streets and grinds all types of travel to a halt. This issue is only profound because there is only two ways to travel to and from the North Shore. The seabus or transitting across one of our two bridges, Lions Gate or Second Narrows.
To manage our traffic and congestion, council need a proactive policy mindset to plan our current and future infrastructure needs. Planning for and around our current obstacles is the best step forward to deal with traffic needs as our current policy should not be dealing with traffic needs only when it becomes relevant. By the way, our last major transit investment, was the Seabus in 1977.
Current policy should have accountable measures to deliver on our community travel and transportation issues. The city’s Mobility Strategy needs to reflect our current and future transit needs, a reflection that this city needs a detailed plan to implement transportation alternatives that are equally or significantly beneficial and competitive against driving.
Policy changes championing these ideas include:
- Updating the current Mobility Strategy through clear, precise details of North Shore’s Transit Plan for the upcoming 4-8-12 years to showcase a more proactive stance on building for and around our infrastructure issues.
- Continuation of the NSTS, ‘North Shore Transportaiton Survey’, to ensure clear and precise reporting on current, deliverable actions, and anticipating future travel needs.
- Utilizing senior levels of government and working with other municipal governments to get the transit investment the North Shore needs.
- Ensure that there is a plan within the next 10 years that looks into North Shore infrastructure. Specifically looking at the replacement of our two bridges and how we can implement rapid transit systems like Skytrain through such investments
- Start the infrastructure groundwork to ensure that more than one BRT can be implemented on the North Shore – Ideas for dedicated BRT lines include utilizing the Lonsdale Corridor or utilizing Highway 1 to get BRTs from Burnaby to Upper Lonsdale.