New Westminster city council is charged up about the idea of including electric vehicle charging stations in new developments in the Royal City.
Council has directed staff to review and report back to council on options to implement requirements for electric vehicle charging in new developments.
Mayor Jonathan Cote said a number of neighbouring municipalities, including Port Coquitlam and Richmond, have passed new bylaws mandating that new developments have a certain number of electrical vehicle charging stations. Given New Westminster’s urban location and the fact that the majority of new development will be in multi-family units, he said it’s something the city should address.
“More and more as we move into the future, I think our vehicles are going to be more likely to be powered by electrification, but if residents don’t have access to be able to charge them, that could cause some serious challenges, particularly with multi-family units,” Cote said.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr said New Westminster does lag somewhat behind on this issue, in part because the city may be overthinking what it needs to accomplish.
“I really don’t believe that there is this need to go really high grade and put in expensive charging units for every parking spot. I think you can accommodate that quite easily by ensuring parking spots have access to electric plug-ins,” he said. “We are not putting a really onerous position forward to new buildings, but we are also making it so each of these units have a simple 110-volt charging which is absolutely adequate. If you sleep overnight, your car will charge overnight. I think sometimes we overthink it and we delay implementing things because we are trying to go too big.”
