The stretch of road on 200th Street in Langley from 64th Avenue to Fraser Highway called “Willowbrook” (there are neither willows nor brooks) is exhibit A in how not to plan a suburban retail shopping area and potential urban centre. The only stretch of road in the Lower Mainland more likely to cause an equivalent exhaustion is Number 3 Road in Richmond. And there is no intersection in the province – not Oak and 70th in Vancouver, not 88th and King George Boulevard in Surrey, not Terminal and Main in Vancouver – more exhausting than 200th and the Highway 10 Bypass.
Willowbrook attracts the maximum amount of traffic because it’s not only one of the largest shopping areas in the province but also because it is the major north/south thoroughfare through Langley for commuting traffic. And – this is what really makes this area special – it is intersected by a high-frequency at-grade rail line along which travel kilometre-long coal trains. Daily. During rush hour.
I’ve tried to identify some sort of overall vehicular vision for Willowbrook and I can’t do it. Its road systems put the maximum number of vehicles in the smallest stretch of road, like some sort of perverse ongoing Guinness Book of World Records stunt. Its traffic lights are coordinated perfectly to tease drivers into the middle of busy intersections and then leave them there. Escape routes for the more strategic (and irresponsible) drivers lead through kid-saturated, elementary-school-laden residential neighbourhoods.
There is no good method or route or time to travel to, from or through Willowbrook that doesn’t involve, at minimum, teleportation. If urban planners knock suburban living because it creates an existence around the automobile they’ll realize that some suburbs weren’t even designed for automobiles when they try to get from North Langley to Brookswood during a rush hour.
Willowbrook isn’t just charmless, it’s anti-charm. The big box stores look like big boxes, except with less pleasant faades. The landscaping that breaks up the acres and acres of empty concrete includes plant species bred especially for their resilience to exhaust, potato chip wrappers and beauty. Road systems within the parking lots are disorienting.
There are sidewalks. Quite a few, actually. And they’re empty. Public transit is effectively non-existent in Willowbrook so if you’re walking it’s because you’ve decided to park at one strip mall and walk to the next one. That makes sense right up until you realize that the intersections are huge and treacherous and the distances are daunting. As you walk you breathe the exhaust of all those cars idling next to you. One significant shopping stretch – the Bypass – doesn’t have sidewalks between malls. Most retail businesses are oriented inwards, away from the roads and sidewalks and towards the acres of mostly empty concrete.
The “pedestrian” isn’t just an abstraction in the Township’s major shopping area: he’s an enemy.
Look, I like the suburbs. It’s why I live here. But there has to be a better way to design a shopping area and urban centre than what’s occured in Willowbrook. The Wife and I drive longer distances to South Surrey to shop – that’s tax revenue leaving the Township, by the way – just to avoid aging twenty years trying to get to and from Willowbrook.
I wonder whether the Township traded a properly designed shopping area and urban centre for a near-instant commercial tax base. At best the Township started something and it just kind of got away from them.
At least they can’t avoid the problem: City Hall is located smack-dab in the middle of this mess.
Filed under: Not Banking or Business, Langley, Suburbs, Urban Planning
Hey, Willowbrook is the Mecca of shopping for us poor under-served people in Maple Ridge – we just elected a Council dedicated to the development of a mini-Willowbrook on the Lougheed Highway east of Kanaka Creek. And pardon me for asking, but what’s so bad about teleportation?
The ALC is watching closely.