Note: This is a scheduled post as I’m away this week, returning Monday April 11, 2011. If you need to reach TransLink info or staff, see this post!

Two notes for the Sapperton/United Boulevard workshops!

Phase 2 starts on April 13, 2011

A reminder that the phase two workshops for the Sapperton/United Boulevard Extension process begin on Wednesday, April 13, 2011.

These workshops will focus on reviewing and refining possible transportation concepts for the area, based on the work done in the phase one workshops.

Discuss initial concepts based on Phase 1
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sapperton Pensioners Hall
318 Keary Street, New Westminster
Google map

Discuss the refined concepts
Saturday, April 30, 2011
9:30 a.m. to noon
Sapperton Pensioners Hall
318 Keary Street, New Westminster
Google map

As always, you can find more info on the TransLink Sapperton/United Boulevard consultation page, or the past Buzzer blog posts on Sapperton.

Notes from the Sapperton/United Boulevard second workshop

And yes, the Sapperton/United Boulevard second workshop on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 wrapped up phase 1 meetings. Here’s the update from our public consultation team, discussing what we heard and what’s next.

About 70 or so people came out on Wednesday, building on the work done in the first workshop, where participants shared what they value most in their communities and what they would like to fix. After the first workshop, participants were challenged to get out before Wednesday’s meeting, take pictures, and bring their ideas on improvements they would like to see.

We heard six presentations from the community about their ideas for United Boulevard Extension and community improvements. Attendees broke out into small groups to discuss solutions to the various issues and concerns. Many alternative ideas were generated, discussed, and debated within the groups. Each table then summarized their deliberations.

Robin Johnston, TransLink’s project manager on this project, explained why the extension is important in his presentation which is summarized below:

Today, single lane, alternating bridge traffic over Brunette River, the at-grade rail crossings and congestion at the Braid/Brunette intersection adversely impact traffic safety and reliability. Resulting traffic problems spill into the community, causing noise, rat-running, truck traffic on non-regional routes, poor air quality, and vehicle queues that limit access to local neighbourhoods.

As the region grows, these traffic problems are expected to get worse, and the local community issues and concerns identified through this process will continue to affect livability. TransLink is striving to develop an improved connection between United Boulevard and Brunette in a way that respects the community values we heard.

This is a good moment to remind everyone of the goal of this consultation process, which is:

“By working together, our goal is to identify a workable and creative solution to United Boulevard Extension (UBE) that is sensitive to community values, enhances the community where possible and fits into the ultimate transportation system. To be a success, the UBE will have an agreeable outcome for residents and businesses of New Westminster and Coquitlam and TransLink.”

Our engineers and planners will now consider everyone’s thoughts from the workshops as they do technical work to generate concepts for community input during Phase 2 of the process.

If you didn’t have a chance to attend a workshop so far but want to have a say, the presentations, and the meeting minutes are posted for you to review, and you can fill out the questionnaire and submit it to vincent.gonsalves@translink.ca.