LETTER: Community Hub is White Rock’s Greatest Opportunity for Improved Transit

Currently, White Rock is a city with sub-par transit service and relatively poor ridership. However, with more cars on the road, steep housing prices, and limited road and parking space, we must improve transit to ensure residents and visitors can get around our city efficiently and affordably. With that said, the Community Hub project is White Rock’s best chance to prove to TransLink that the city deserves better transit.

From a transportation planning perspective, one of the greatest hurdles to expanding bus service is bus exchange and layover space. The existing White Rock Centre at North Bluff Rd and Johnston Rd is far overcapacity with 11 Bays sprawling across multiple city blocks, and only 3 of the 11 Bays are located within White Rock’s boundaries. The civic block that was selected for the Community Hub site would be an ideal location for a “New” White Rock Centre, with a layover facility included in a portion of the Community Hub building.

If we provide this layover space along the roads surrounding the civic block, TransLink could extend some of the city’s most regionally significant bus routes directly into the heart of the city, serving one of the city’s highest commercial corridors with substantially better transit. Routes like the 321 to Surrey, 531 to Langley, and the 351 to Richmond would be ideal routes to serve the length of Johnston Rd and the Community Hub but currently only enter White Rock to turn around. By extending these routes to the Civic Block, we would greatly increase White Rock’s regional significance as part of TransLink’s Frequent Transit Network and compliment the upcoming BRT line to the renamed Semiahmoo Town Centre.

We also hope that the selection of the Civic Block over Uptown will not result in a reduction in potential height or density. This project provides a valuable opportunity to leverage city-owned land to provide affordable housing and other useful amenities, and should not be compromised over fears of neighbourhood opposition. As the hub of White Rock for many decades, we hope this project will be built with the long-term future of White Rock in mind. This is an exciting time for the city and we hope improved transit service will be included in the conversation.

Arden English

Creator and Volunteer at Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders

Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders is a non-profit that represents our region’s one million transit riders. We’ve often been left out of the conversation, and we’re here to speak up for faster, more reliable, more abundant transit. We’re focused on the growing number of bus routes where riders are left behind by full buses, day after day, primarily in Surrey and South Vancouver, as well as the urgent need for bus lanes that cost almost nothing but massively improve commutes for hundreds of thousands of people.