Closed again, and where is the detour sign?
Industrial Avenue is shut today and tomorrow. The Township's list for this one week runs to more than two dozen closures and lane squeezes. Four different websites, one standard sentence about signage, and a modest proposal: tell us before the last turn-off.
Dear everyone who closes roads in Langley,
Industrial Avenue is shut between 201A and 203 Street today and tomorrow, 6 am to 8 pm, with no way onto 203 from Industrial, so a concrete pour and some track can go in on the guideway overhead. Fine. We want the train, we have said so, and a pour is a pour. This is also, by the Advance Times’ count, the latest in a year and a half of closures at that one corner: October 1 was the whole intersection, scheduled 6 am to midnight, for another pour.
Here is our question, and it is the same question every time the orange barrels come out: how was a person supposed to know?
We went looking, the way a reasonable resident might the night before. The answer is four websites. The SkyTrain project posts a “Weekly Traffic Advisory” on Friday afternoon, detail in an attached notice. The Township publishes a “Closures and Impacts” page every week. The City has a “Roadwork and Construction” page. Highway 1 belongs to the Province, which the Township kindly relays. Drive from Willoughby to downtown by way of 200 Street and you are a customer of all four.
To be fair to the Township, its list is thorough. This week’s runs to more than two dozen entries: Highway 1 crossing traffic onto the opposite lanes overnight until October 31 with the 232 Street ramps closed, the 212 Connector shut by day until November 27, four streets around 84 Avenue and 200 Street closed until October 30, 88 Avenue squeezed to one lane in three places, one of them until January 15. One entry is headed “40 Avenue, extended until October 30” and then describes paving on 208 Street from August 8 to 31, which is what happens when a list gets pasted forward week after week by busy people. Nobody reads a wall like that at a red light, which is why the neighbourhood groups learn about a closure from the person sitting in it. The City’s page, meanwhile, has an “Upcoming traffic impacts” section whose newest items are “estimated to start mid-August.”
And then there is the sentence. Nearly every Township notice ends with it: “A detour route will be in effect and indicated by signage.” We believe it. In our experience the sign is at the barrier, where it is of enormous help to the people already stuck behind it and none at all to the ones two blocks back who could have turned at the last light. A detour sign you can only read once you have reached the closure is not a detour sign. It is a condolence card.
What would fix it
Two things, neither expensive.
One map. The four of you already write this down every week; you just publish it in four places in four formats. Put every current and upcoming closure in both Langleys on one dated map a phone can open, fed from the lists staff already write. The City has an active-projects map on its page, so the plumbing exists.
One rule about signs. For any planned full closure of a through road, the first sign goes up at the decision point, before the last turn-off, a week ahead, with the dates on it. “Industrial Ave CLOSED Oct 27–28, 6 am–8 pm” on a board at 200 Street from October 20 costs one sign and a week’s notice, and saves a few thousand U-turns.
Where to act
Tell the people who can change it: the Township’s and City’s problem-report forms are on our report a problem page, and the SkyTrain project has a 24/7 line at 1-844-815-6111 and email at [email protected]. Tell them how you found out about the closure, and when. Our running list of what the SkyTrain has closed in Langley is on the cones post.
Yours from the left-turn lane,
A neighbour