VANCOUVER—Former Conservative MP Wai Young took aim at bike lanes, dirty streets and an increased tax on homes worth more than $3 million as she announced her candidacy for mayor of Vancouver on Thursday.

Young is running as part of a newly created political party, Coalition Vancouver, some of whose members are former Non-Partisan Association faithful. Peter Labrie, the president of the new party, said it had been created in January and had around 1,000 members.

Young offered few details on how she would address the key issue of the election, Vancouver’s high housing prices, but she said high taxes are the main reason the city is so unaffordable.

She had much more to say about Vancouver’s network of bike lanes, characterizing them as “a private road system which benefits very few in society.” She promised to halt several new lanes that are under construction: the 10th Ave. bike lane that runs near Vancouver General Hospital and several other health care facilities; the Cambie Bridge bike lane; and a paved lane planned for Kitsilano Park.

Saying she’s heard from many people that bike lanes are dangerous, Young also promised that her administration won’t put in any new bike lanes without removing a bike lane on a one-for-one basis.

She called the city’s construction of new bike lanes and plan to remove the Georgia and Dunsmuir St. viaducts an “ideological agenda to artificially constrict our streets.”

She also promised free parking on Sundays.

The Vision Vancouver-dominated council is the architect of Vancouver’s extensive bike lane network. In 2014, Vancouver’s centre-right NPA also tried to speak to frustrated drivers, promising free parking on Sundays and to add a counterflow lane to some busy streets. Vision won that election, and since that time has continued to add bike lanes.

Speaking to reporters after her speech, Young said homelessness and housing are very complex issues and she would have more to say on those topics in the near future.

Asked about her stance on the city’s new strategy of building temporary modular housing for homeless people, she had heard concerns from parents living near the housing in Vancouver’s Marpole neighbourhood about safety after they read city documents that outlined the higher-needs people who might be placed there. She said people had told her they would be fine with the housing if it only housed single mothers.

While Vancouver’s left is currently split amongst four parties, the right is also beginning to look fractured.

The Non-Partisan Association, Vancouver’s venerable centre-right party, recently chose a centrist candidate, businessman Ken Sim, as their mayoral candidate. Hector Bremner, an NPA city councillor who the party rejected as a mayoral candidate, is still mulling forming his own party.

The crowded field means that Vancouver’s election could potentially be won with as little as 20 per cent of the vote, according to pollster Mario Canseco.

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