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Originally Posted by Ramsay
I think Surrey missed a huge opportunity to build a network of vibrant communities. Skytrain to Langley may be good for SoF but at the expense of connecting the communities within Surrey. Just my thoughts.
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Part of the problem with Surrey First's LRT obsession was the idea that LRT was the key to creating vibrant, walkable, transit-oriented communities, as opposed to...actually planning and building those communities along those lines. Like you could just plop down a streetcar line and King George Boulevard would look like Hamburg. They could have spent their long years in office pushing for better building forms that would have created vibrant streets with or without LRT, but they didn't, and consequently KGB, Fraser Highway, and 104th are chock full of recently approved and built SFHs, strip malls, and non-street-oriented townhomes. Any lack of vibrancy is directly attributable to their legacy of atrocious planning rather than the building of one transit line over another, or one rail system over another.
I forget who it was but someone on Twitter had a great line about Surrey's LRT being "cargo cult urbanism". Pretty much sums it up.
That said, figuring out how to connect Surrey's disparate neighbourhoods is a real issue and one that hasn't really been fully solved by switching to Skytrain. The L-line route is still a vital corridor and I'd really like to see McCallum and co. address it.
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