Praise to New West for approving plan to quickly address bus delay
For Immediate Release
NEW WESTMINSTER – On Monday July 8th, New Westminster City Council endorsed a staff report titled ‘Bus Speed and Reliability Study’ that includes overviews and potential remedies to hotspots in New Westminster that impart extreme delay and unreliability onto transit buses and their thousands of daily riders. Hotspots in the plan include both ends of the Queensborough bridge and the Hwy 91A interchange, access and egress from 22nd Street SkyTrain Station, 6th Ave, 6th St, 8th St, and Carnarvon St.
Movement was extremely pleased to see the endorsement of this plan by the majority of city council and, in addition, the response from Mayor Patrick Johnstone and councillors Ruby Campbell and Nadine Nakagawa (see video of council meeting). When prompted by other members of council to delay this report, they were vehemently not interested and, instead, asked staff if they were able to accomplish these bus priority measures even faster than proposed in the report. Supportive councillors recognized how critical transit and buses are in providing accessible, climate friendly, cost effective, and safe transportation to residents of New West.
One of the maps from the report, showing the most congested parts of New West. 6th Street, 8th Street, and the Queensborough Bridge have some of the most congested segments.
This is the type of political leadership needed in every single Metro Vancouver municipality if we hope to address extreme overcrowding and bus delay.
Movement is calling on every municipality in Metro Vancouver and the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to address bus delay in their own jurisdiction with a comprehensive plan and with as much urgency and enthusiasm as New Westminster is.
Transit ridership in New Westminster and Metro Vancouver is incredibly high with many corridors seeing the majority of their users on a bus. On 6th St during rush hour, 62% of people on the road are in a bus! In Connaught Heights around 22nd Street Station and the Queensborough Bridge, 71% of people on the road are in a bus! Yet this majority of people that are choosing to use public transit are taking up a tiny amount of road space and are being significantly delayed by those in private vehicles.
Imagine the number of people that would choose to take transit if buses had dedicated space enabling them to bypass traffic congestion and get them to their destination faster. The amount of road space saved by this shift would decrease congestion for those that do need to drive and for commercial vehicles which will always depend on traveling by road. This letter recently published in the New West Record, in response to council’s decision, shows how people rely on public transit to get them to important destinations, yet are constantly let down and neglected by road use decisions made by cities.
These changes do not need to be monumental or expensive. They can be extremely easy and inexpensive for cities to undertake. Short bus lanes at intersections (queue jumps) can mean that buses don’t miss a green light and sit stuck while waiting a whole light cycle.
Extended sidewalks and bus stops (bus bulbs) can improve bus speed by reducing the need for bus operators to repeatedly wait for drivers who do not yield to the bus when it is trying to reenter the travel lane. Bus bulbs also improve the pedestrian realm and can provide many benefits to high streets or business improvement areas (e.g., they can complement dining patios, bike share, loading zones, street beautification, tree).
Nearly 12,000 passengers boarded a bus at 22nd St Station on an average day in 2023. By all indications, ridership is expected to have grown even higher in 2024. Although the station is in New Westminster, it serves routes stretching all the way to Langley, Surrey, Delta, Burnaby, Vancouver, and Richmond. Photo can be used with attribution to Movement
Movement also wants to specifically address the area that encompasses Connaught Heights, Stewardson Way, the Hwy 91A interchange, the Queensborough Bridge, and Queensborough. A significant amount of New West’s Bus Speed & Reliability Study focuses on this area, as it should. However, the most meaningful change in this area is not fixable by New Westminster alone because it is controlled by the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. 22nd Street SkyTrain Station and its access to Marine Way and Hwy 91A (and therefore Hwy 17, Hwy 91, Hwy 99, and south Vancouver) make it an incredibly central and important transportation hub. The Ministry should not be allowing the enormous amount of delay seen at this interchange on both ends of the Queensborough Bridge.
In TransLink’s Bus Speed & Reliability Report, Queensborough Bridge/Hwy 91A has the highest daily passenger load of all New West corridors (13,500 people/day; one-direction) and the second highest Maximum Hourly Buses (69 buses/hour; one-direction).
This hub and interchange could provide extremely fast travel times by express buses on highways to numerous places in the region, yet its widely known as a location to be avoided due to congestion.
The regional significance and potential of this hub and interchange of 22nd Street Station and Queensborough Bridge/Hwy 91A needs to be addressed and leveraged by speeding up buses and providing more regional bus service using highway bus lanes.
Quotes:
“Do you use public transit but hate waiting for the bus, not knowing if it’ll show up on time or whether it will be full?
These scenarios aren’t unique to New Westminster, but it’s quite unique that our city is embracing a plan to address “hot spots” like the Queensborough Bridge, the Hwy 91A interchange, 6th Street, 8th Street, and downtown. These areas of high delay contribute to bus delay and unreliability, both of which can result in overcrowding and deter public transit use.
New Westminster is committing to supporting transit users because it’s transit use that makes this region thrive.”
– Michael Hall, New Westminster resident and Movement volunteer
See the rest of his letter to the New West Record here.
“Buses in New Westminster are overcrowded and delayed. While senior levels of government squabble over who should pay to increase transit service, New West council has made it clear that they’re ready to get to work and do what they can to get bus riders moving again.
Highway 91A to Queensborough remains the elephant in the room, under the control of the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI). Affordable tweaks to that highway could make transit a reliable option for tens of thousands of people, and we’re eager for them to acknowledge how much good they could do.
We call upon MLA Aman Singh to speak up not only for the Queensborough residents who deserve reliable access to the region, but also all the Richmond, Surrey, Delta, and Langley residents who use the Highway 91A corridor to access the SkyTrain.”
– Denis Agar, Executive Director, Movement