Surrey makes pitch to get Metro Vancouver’s first Bus Rapid Transit line

The City of Surrey is making a push to become the first Metro Vancouver municipality to get a new form of transit.

The city wants TransLink to give it the first in a proposed series of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines in the region.

BRT would use higher-capacity buses, and according to TransLink, would deliver faster service through dedicated lanes, traffic signal priority, off-board fare collection and enhanced stations. TransLink has highlighted nine potential routes, and is hoping to select the top three for prioritization.

Surrey wants to see the line run down King George Boulevard from the existing Central City SkyTrain Station to the bus loop at Highway 99 in the south.

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Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke told Global News her city is best qualified for the first line because it already has much of the infrastructure in place, laid down years ago in preparation for a since-scrapped Light Rail Transit (LRT) system.

“It will likely go down the centre and it will take up two lanes — but we are ready for that, we had all those plans put in place right when we were starting the LRT,” she said.

“You will see there’s already bus lanes most of the way to 72nd and beyond.”

Surrey’s pitch for the first line also hinges on the fact it is home to some of the most crowded routes in Metro Vancouver.

TransLink statistics show bus ridership in Surrey and Langley is at 120 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, while some routes like the #310 from Surrey to Ladner have seen ridership more than double.

“Newton is a larger community than many cities in Metro Vancouver, there’s almost 170,000 people just in the Newton area,” Locke said.

“Growing that infrastructure, growing that transportation network, is going to be incredibly important.”

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Surrey’s business community is also on board with the pitch.

Surrey Board of Trade president and CEO Anita Huberman said the city has been “starved” of transit and transportation investment compared to other parts of Metro Vancouver.

The city is growing by up to 1,400 people per month, she said, and will be home to much of the 1.3 million people expected to move to Metro Vancouver in the next 12 years.

“Our whole strategic plan is prefaced on the fact that transportation drives economic development, so we want this Bus Rapid Transit that is being proposed to be prioritized by TransLink, by the region — Surrey needs to be number one on the priority list,” she said.

“Yes, SkyTrain is coming, but that’s only part of the puzzle related to what we need for transpiration investments.”

Huberman said she’s also bullish on the BRT idea because the same corridors could potentially be used one day for a transition to an LRT system, one she hopes could be built out both north-south and east-west in the city.

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Surrey’s aggressive push for the BRT line comes after Richmond city council decisively rejected a proposed route between its city centre and Metrotown in Burnaby.

Speaking on CKNW’s The Jill Bennett Show, Burnaby Mayor and vice-chair of the TransLink Mayors’ Council Mike Hurley said he wasn’t surprised by Richmond’s rejection.

He said Richmond believed the road network proposed for the route wasn’t sufficient, and that the idea would likely head back to the drawing board to see if staff could come up with something more to the city’s liking.

In the meantime, he said the rejection meant the Mayors’ Council would be choosing from eight proposed routes rather than nine.

“If we’re able to achieve the funding we will be moving forward with three routes as quickly as possible; it’s just that route, from Richmond to Metrotown, will go on the backburner.”

Whether Surrey will find itself at the top of that list, he said, will depend on how the Mayors’ Council votes at an upcoming meeting.

Mayors will be assessing proposed routes on a variety of factors.

“There’s ridership, that’s one of the top ones, then there’s where it would help people get to work, that’s a second factor,” he said.

“And then, of course, there’s ease of actually doing it — some routes are better suited to it than others, and will take less design and probably be a bit cheaper to build.”

In a statement, TransLink said it would continue to work with the Mayors’ Council to prioritize municipalities that are ready to move forward with BRT, while working to speed up service on existing routes elsewhere.

The TransLink Mayors’ Council is still seeking funding for its proposed $21-billion, 10-year Access for Everyone plan, which aims to double bus service across the region, add nine new bus rapid transit lines, extend the Broadway subway to UBC and build a gondola to SFU.