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Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
Surrey's problem is more than just density. You need more than just density adjacent to rapid transit - you also need feeder services to bring people to it. Surrey's biggest problem is a built infrastructure that strongly discourages walking. You see this in houses located at the ends of cul-de-sac hell where it's a long walk to the nearest arterial street that could support a bus route, and in the huge mall parking lots which mean a substantial walk to the shops from the bus stop, and in the fact that outside the malls it's impractical to walk from one store to the next because of the distances involved. If people are discouraged from walking to the bus or walking between stores to run errands, how are you going to convince them to become transit (and thence rapid transit) customers?
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That is a common misconception of Surrey. Many cul-de-sacs in Surrey have pedestrian paths between properties at the end through to the next culdesac. This is very common in newer developments like Clayton. There are some where it doesn't go through, but for the most part, every neighbourhood has a pretty direct walking path to the nearest arterial.
The problem is that Translink doesn't have bus service on every arterial, and many of them are peak or infrequent service; so it is a long walk to the frequent bus bus stop. And even then, many bus routes then snake through the community to overlap as many arterial roads with one route, instead of being direct to the nearest exchange.
In commercial areas, it is not uncommon for distances to be large between the places you want to visit, even on a street like Broadway. The problem in Surrey is many areas have been ignored for street upgrades, making actually hard to get from the street TO the commercial property. It is not that it is too far, it is that the city has no money to build a sidewalk and then a path into the commercial property. It's not sprawl that is the problem, it is our insanely low taxes keep the roads like shit.
Behind a lot of developments is preserved greenspace. It's not really an official park, but it is also not undeveloped land. Like look at Bear Creek snaking through Northeast Newton. Hidden under the trees are walking paths that make walking in the city quite nice, through greenspace to protect the creek. Vancouver has the "luxury" of having paved over and filled in all their natural creeks decades ago to complete the street grid. We've tried to protect them.
But you're right, maybe we should cut down every tree and pave over every creek if we want to deserve rapid transit.
Skytrain isn't only used to reward previous unrestrained development and density. It can be used to encourage spheres of density at town centers at stations, that would otherwise be SFH as far as the eye can see.
If Surrey is too sprawly for some tastes, it is because there has been to reason not to be. You need the station first, so you can actually get people willing to pay to be in a small condo near it.
Look at what Burnaby has done around the Millennium line in 13 short years. Imagine what Surrey would be like today if Skytrain went to 168 St in 1997 like it should have. We could have focused a little less on super towers around King George, and on more mid rise development the rest of the way.
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Originally Posted by Pinion
That photo is of North Van, not New West. The seabus has obviously played a factor in its density but 40 years ago it was nothing as well, and the seabus is crap compared to skytrain. e.g. 30 minute intervals after 6:30pm, 12km/h maximum speed.
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You can't compare just speed. Walking is even slower, but the preferred method if you are close to your destination because the trip is shorter.
Skytrain might be fast, but Surrey City Center is still 40 minutes away from downtown. North Van is 15 minutes away on the Seabus. Even if you miss the Seabus by 1 second, it still only takes 30 minutes to get downtown, shorter than Skytrain from Surrey.
I guess we have different definitions of "fast"?
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Originally Posted by jhausner
Unfortunately grass lots don't make it look dense and there are certainly no-man lands still and will be for coming time. But where does that line get drawn? There _are_ neighborhoods in Surrey today though that are > 7000/km2. They don't have high-rises but like I've said previously, you just take a drive out to Clayton or parts around Morgan Heights or Panorama Village and you'll go "wow ok they are cramming a lot into small spaces here." It all adds up. The image above of New West shows some high-rises (most in New West are shorties) but a lot of infill buildings. It's all those infill buildings that add up to density fast.
Look at Broadway. Most of its density is not from high-rises.
At the end though again we circle to this argument that somehow you must already have huge density to justify rapid transit when I've pointed out in other threads indisputably that the majority of our RRT has developed BEFORE density was ever established nearly everywhere from Metrotown to Lougheed, Coquitlam (which doesn't even compare to Surrey Central btw) to Brentwood, Joyce, Patterson, even New Westminster. They were all pretty much flat forests when SkyTrain went in. So just going on history, many parts of Surrey don't need to build density before RRT as that isn't a requirement anywhere they actually have more than many parts that have SkyTrain now had when it was first built.
Surrey did drop the ball though and it should be far more dense in Surrey Central than it is today due to failures of previous councils and we as citizens supported the no-investment councils for over a decade.
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I don't think Surrey dropped the ball at all, except maybe early on in the late 90s. But since then, the fate of Surrey's downtown has been in the hands of those willing to pay for construction. In fact, the city has done a good job holding on for tall buildings while keeping developers from cashing out (by building short woodframe buildings) during the market crash.
The city can zone all it wants, but the economy can only create and absorb so many small condo units at a time.
You have to look at it from a developers prospective. They can only build and sell so many units in the region at once. There are only so many buyers in the market at once, and there are only so many construction workers available to build them at once. Even without building high rises in Surrey, the concrete Condo inventory in the region has been pretty high recently.
So you are the developer and you have land in Burnaby and in Surrey. You can only finance constructing one high rise at a time (and you don't have enough friends in construction to get enough workers for 2 sites without paying more than market rates for labor). The price of the land for your tower really isn't that different, maybe a few million tops. But the cost of building your 30 floor tower is the exact same, whether you build it downtown Vancouver or Abbotsford. And that is the most expensive portion. So at the end of the day, building in Burnaby or in Surrey costs almost the same. But, Burnaby is closer to Vancouver. The commutes (driving or Skytrain) are half. People are willing to pay more to live there. Each unit sells for more than the difference in cost to you, so your margins are better on the Burnaby building. So the Burnaby project generates way more profit.
Which one are you going to build?
Concrete tower condo buyers aren't the only buyers around. So developers also build low rise condos, townhomes, rowhomes, duplexes, and SFH. But for these, the price of land comes more into play. To keep sale prices low and attractive, you build a lot of these out in the suburbs. But Surrey zoning is keeping that from happening at Central City, keeping it for future towers.
So that is why there is a bit of a hole near City Center. The space is saved for when inventory dries up NoF and suddenly buying a Condo in Whalley is as close as you can get to a Skytrain station (which is starting to happen). In the meantime, developers have been building like crazy to the east. So you get a bit of a lull in density.
If there is a problem in Surrey, it is that city council is treating what little land there is near Skytrain like it is a scarce resource. So the zoning is holding out for the biggest of the big developments; no space to waste on infill. If we had more stations, we could be a little more lax in our zoning and allow more mixed density in the area (places that are more affordable).