Dear Editor,
It’s long past time we forced a serious discussion about road conditions.
Rob Gaw’s letter [Langley neighbourhood development causing headache for driver, Langley Advance Times, Oct. 14] equally applies to Langley City, where I live.
In the past five years, the Nikomekl neighbourhood has endured endless construction to bring higher density homes to an area that is already at close to peak road capacity.
None of the new developments are built with appropriate parking, forcing residents to park on the streets. Some have resorted to parking in front of driveways, blocking access for the resident.
As a result, many streets have become parking lots.
Car alarms go off 24 hours a day, the result of someone who lives in a condo half a block away choosing to arm a car and then taking several minutes to wake up and realize it’s their alarm they are hearing – if they hear it at all.
I live on 54th Avenue, and it is impossible for two cars to drive on either side of the road. One must pull over to let the other pass.
Much screaming and swearing ensues. There have even been some accidents, due to the construction of dangerous curb extensions that force vehicle traffic closer together and the lack of street space.
Roads are torn up to install the necessary utilities for all the new development, but the resurfacing is sub-par: poorly done patch jobs whose surface is significantly lower than the original road surface.
Further tax dollars are wasted to install speed humps or to turn a lane into a dedicated bus lane that is used every 15 minutes by those few who have the luxury of taking a bus to work or to run errands.
And the buses don’t have dedicated pullouts, but simply stop in the street, creating additional congestion behind them.
Numerous cities around the world have taken these same lazy approaches, with predictable results. Fortaleza, Shenzhen, Budapest, London, Rome, Paris, Vancouver, and hundreds of others, failed to maintain and expand the road networks to meet demand created by insatiable property developers.
The congestion created by all the SkyTrain lines in Burnaby, Vancouver, etc., will soon arrive in Langley.
Anytime someone talks about a transportation plan, what they really mean is a development plan that will lead to increased population density and worsen local traffic.
We need to demand that our roads are expanded and maintained proportionate to the number of people living in the region.
It’s a common sense expectation.
Simon A. Solomon, Langley City
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