Councillor says more people per capita in New West use transit, cycle and walk

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – New Westminster is steering away from spending a bulk of its dollars on road improvements.

The city is making improvements for pedestrians a major priority. Councillor Patrick Johnstone says more people in his city walk, cycle and takes transit in comparison to other places in Metro Vancouver.

“New Westminster out of all the cities in the lower mainland has one of the highest sustainable mode shares. We have more people in the New Westminster use transit per capita than any other city in the lower mainland. That’s the type of transportation we need to support in the city. We’re an old city, we’re fully built out, we don’t have room to build more roads and, we need to, if we’re going to have a transportation plan that moves people we need to think about alternative modes than to build more roads.”

In its transportation plan, the city is spending more money than it did before on things like sidewalks, pedestrian bridges, and the greenway by the Fraser River. Another priority is improving curbs to make them more wheelchair-accessible.

“It does put a focus on sustainable transportation modes, be that transit, pedestrians, bicycles and start to put those as more of a priority than just building more lanes to put cars through town. We’re using roads less per capita compared to anyone else but we have more roads.”

He says a lot of the work has already started and should carry on for the next few years.