Light rail to come to TWU
Plans for a light rail at Trinity Western University are currently under way. A light rail is a passenger rail service that uses rail tracks similar to those of a train and was used in the early 1900’s with the purpose of serving agricultural cities located south of the Fraser River. The light rail was decommissioned in the 1950’s due to automobiles becoming the most prominent means of transportation.
The first step towards putting this in place was to renew passenger rights. In 1988, an agreement was made with BC Hydro that resulted in both the rails and stocks being sold to a rail company in Chicago. This agreement also contained passenger rights that would be valid for 21 years.
In August of 2009 these rights expired, but with the election of Mayor Green, these passenger rights were renewed in June of 2010 and are now owned by BC taxpayers.
The whereabouts of the platforms have yet to be determined, though there will be several platforms around Langley in the North and South areas, as well as 200th Street.
A demo line of the light rail will be up and running within the next two to three years. This demo line will be available in order to determine its potential popularity.
Amelia –
Its awesome that you wrote about light rail! Its an important issue to us on the south side of the Fraser River as we push for more accessible and useful public transit. However, I had a meeting with Mayor Green last week about light rail and I just want to clarify a couple of things relating to light rail and how it affects our school.
There are two major issues when it comes to light rail: $$$ and Translink. First off, Translink is broke. They’re being bailed out by the local municipalities and they don’t really have plentiful capital lying around ready to be used. That’s why the Evergreen Line hasn’t even been started yet.
Secondly, Translink is . . . well they’re a bureaucratic organization that doesn’t move very quickly. The line that runs through Trinity is known as the Interurban line and recently Translink decided that they not even consider the Interurban line because it doesn’t run through the areas where they see population growth happening in the future. Another Translink issue is that they prefer SkyTrain (rapid transit) technology over light rail. That’s another reason they don’t like the Interurban corridor.
Mayor Green and the other mayors in the area are working to lobby Translink and keep light rail on the table as an option but Translink is hard to sway. If some money can be found somewhere then Mayor Green would like to see a demo line in the future from Surrey to Abbotsford to show Translink the viability of light rail, but a time frame on that is very unclear.
Light rail is a pretty exciting idea and it is obviously a lot cheaper than SkyTrain but in terms of when it might actually help TWU students, it will probably be when our children are attending TWU.