It’s not much of a surprise what the City of New Westminster’s engineering department has planned for 2014.
“There is probably three things at the top – transportation, transportation and transportation,” said Jim Lowrie, the city’s director of engineering. “The very high priorities are to complete our master transportation plan. That’s number one.”
The city expects to wrap up its master transportation plan this spring. The plan that was last updated in 1998. The new plan will address all types of transportation including walking, cycling, public transit, goods movement and vehicles.
“We are at the final stages. We have some draft policies that we will be taking forward to our advisory committee in the month of February,” he said. “We will be preparing a draft plan and hopefully take that to the public in the springtime. So it’s pretty close to being completed.”
Transportation issues have long ranked as the Number 1 concern of New Westminster residents.
Lowrie also expects the city to make some headway on planning for a replacement Pattullo Bridge this year. The city has been working with TransLink and Surrey on a “collaborative strategic review process” to find a long-term solution for the Pattullo Bridge.
“That’s coming out for public consultation again in February,” he said. “It’s gone from 25 options down to six, and in this next round of consultation, one of the objectives is to narrow that down to about two or three options. Then there would be further technical analysis done on that shortlist.”
To date, the City of New Westminster hasn’t stated which of the options it would support. In addition to getting input from the public as part of this next round of consultation, the city also expects to express its preferences.
“At the end of the day, TransLink has to make the final decision,” Lowrie said. “They have made it very express to us that they will do the utmost to reach a solution that is agreeable to both cities.”
Lowrie is fairly confident a “preferred solution” will be determined this year.
The third major item on the engineering department’s to-do list for 2014 is to address whistle cessation at railway crossings.
“Train whistle cessation is on our list as a high priority,” Lowrie said. “We will be putting a lot of effort toward that. Certainly in the downtown we hope to be able to conclude that this year.”
Lowrie anticipates the signals and improvements needed to put an end to rail whistles downtown will be completed this year.
“We have two crossings in the downtown area. The first one is at Begbie Street; the other is at Fourth Street. Those two crossings are pretty critical in the downtown area. That’s our first priority,” he said. “We are also looking at train whistle cessation in other neighbourhoods, the Queensborough neighbourhood, and I guess I would call it the Fraserview neighbourhood.”
Lowrie said the city has to do a number of rail crossing improvements so the trains can stop blowing their whistles.
The city will also continue to deal with truck traffic in 2014. It’s become a hot topic of conversation in the community, particularly since tolls were implemented on the Port Mann Bridge and the number of trucks counted on city streets, particularly Royal Avenue, climbed.
“Truck traffic corridors is obviously another issue that is perhaps a little bit separate but also influences two of those three – the master transportation plan and Pattullo Bridge,” Lowrie said. “We are looking at excluding several of the truck routes or introducing new prohibitions on several corridors, notably Royal Avenue, and Columbia Street is the other one and east Eighth Avenue. Those are priority corridors we are looking at.”
