Farmers and a civil engineer are raising concerns over a proposal for a major road extension in Surrey, B.C.
The project to extend 72 Avenue eastbound to connect with Highway 15 has an estimated construction cost of $138 million, with officials saying it’s the city’s largest transportation investment in its history after it was approved last month.
Currently, 72 Avenue becomes a dead end just east of 152 Street — around four kilometres from Highway 15, which runs from Highway 1 south to the U.S. border.
The proposed extension route would cut through farmland, part of the province’s agricultural land reserve (ALR).
Coun. Linda Annis says the extension is desperately needed as Surrey continues to grow, and that building the extension would allow commuters to connect more easily with neighbouring communities.
“We’ve got between 1,200 and 1,500 people moving to Surrey each and every month, so we need to be building road systems,” she said. “People in Surrey are commuting far, far too long.”
Surrey is moving ahead with a proposal that would see eastbound 72 Avenue extended from 152nd Street to Highway 15. The city says it’s bracing for significant population growth and increased traffic in the coming years. But as Janella Hamilton reports, the project is stirring up concern among the local farming community and some business owners in the area.
Farmer worried over livelihood
Brian Livingston, one of the farmers who would be affected by the 72 Avenue extension, says the road would be detrimental to his dairy farming business.
Livingston, whose grandfather bought the farm property more than a century ago, says he’s worried about the loss of land and also the security of his land, with the new road giving easy access.
The farmer says he is also concerned about how to irrigate his land, which was added to the ALR around 50 years ago, once the large road project goes through.
“It’s very rich soil, but it’s very soft,” he said. “Any road that’s in this area has to be raised and packed up with the gravel, which essentially makes a dike, and therefore has ponding issues.
“You either have no access points, one access point, or ditches and pumps to to dry it, which takes up even more precious land,” said Livingston, who added that he hasn’t been approached to give input on the road expansion proposal.
Surrey Coun. Mike Bose says he understands the concerns being raised by farmers in the 72 Avenue area.
“It’s going to be a loss of about 40 acres of productive land,” said Bose, himself a farmer.
He said the city would consider the issue of drainage and irrigation when they build the road, as well as working with farmers on security and access in the months to come.
“Without mistake, we will create challenges for these farms if this road is built,” he said. “But it’s necessary for the congestion … and we know that that congestion will grow.”
Induced demand
A statement from the City of Surrey says the new road is based on traffic modelling, and that with the city’s population projected to reach one million by 2042, the 72 Avenue extension will ensure “adequate traffic capacity well into the future.”
But a traffic engineer says the premise that building more roads will lead to less congestion has been disproven countless times.
Amir Hassanpour, a UBC PhD candidate in civil engineering, says a basic traffic concept called induced demand describes how congestion initially improves when more roads are built.
This, he said, makes getting around by car faster — which then leads more people to use cars. Over time, the number of vehicles on the road increases, leading to more congestion.
Hassanpour says traffic modelling can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“If you are predicting that there will be a lot of driving in the future — and you have a grand project to accommodate that driving — yeah, you are going to have a lot of driving into the future,” he said, adding that officials have to look at alternative transportation.
“You have to have better buses. You have to have better public transportation system for people to be able to get around, or active transportation.”
Annis said the city would conduct extensive consultations before construction of the road begins.
“It’s absolutely critical the road goes through, but let’s do it in a way that is beneficial to the farming community and beneficial to the residents of Surrey,” she said.
The city will soon apply to the agricultural land commission, the provincial body responsible for administering the ALR, as it moves forward with the project.
An exact timeline, as well as the exact design of the road, has not yet been provided.