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New West mayor hosting online chat with TransLink CEO about Metro Van's transportation future

Save the date: Dec. 9
pattullo-bridge
Roads and transit are two of the topics you'll hear about during a Dec. 9 livestream about the region's transportation plans. File

Mayor Jonathan Cote is hosting a livestream discussion on the future of regional transportation – and you’re invited.

Cote, who chairs the regional Mayor’s Council on Transportation, invites New West residents to learn more about the region’s plans for transportation and to meet TransLink’s chief executive officer Kevin Quinn at a special livestream chat. It’s taking place on Thursday, Dec. 9 at 6:30 p.m.

“Effective transportation is vital to livable communities, economic viability and long-term regional sustainability,” Cote said in a news release. “It’s particularly important here in New Westminster, where we face many local mobility challenges, while also dealing with a huge daily influx of regional traffic passing through our community.”

According to a press release from the City of New Westminster, the future of the local and regional transportation “is at a crossroads” as TransLink pushes forward with its Transport 2050 plan.  

“The ability to keep people and goods moving freely around the region is becoming increasingly complex,” said the press release. “A growing regional population, the need to transition to more sustainable transportation modes and travel pattern impacts, such as spiralling real estate prices and more people working at home, are just some of the challenges being grappled with by planners and regional decision makers.”

 In October, TransLink released the first full draft of Transport 2050, which is the strategy for the next 30 years of transportation in Metro Vancouver.

The draft strategy includes more than 100 recommendations to improve transportation over the next three decades. Key actions that are recommended to be taken over the next 30 years include: quadrupling the rapid transit network; completing an 850-kilometre traffic-separated major bikeway network; and promoting electric and shared vehicles such as bikes, scooters, and cars. 

A full copy of the plan is available at transport2050.ca.

“Transport 2050 will transform the way we move and live,” said Quinn, who became TransLink’s CEO in July. “We conducted the largest public outreach in TransLink’s history to develop the plan as it’s imperative our transportation future is guided by the people who live and work here in the region. I look forward to continued dialogue as we move forward with this process.”

Prior to the livestream on Zoom, participants can submit transportation questions in advance to nwmatters@newwestcity.ca. They can also submit questions during the livestream.

To participate in the Zoom meeting, follow the link found on the city’s website at www.newwestcity.ca. The event will also be streamed live on the City of New Westminster’s Facebook page.

For folks wanting to view the meeting at another time, a video of the discussion will be posted on the New West Matters page on the city’s website. You’ll find it at www.newwestcity.ca/newwestmatters.