Tsawwassen needs more commercial nodes!

From the Delta Optimist.....

I can remember having to keep up with my mom on walks from our home up to the shops to buy groceries when I was a kid. I would struggle along with my little legs pumping furiously to keep up to what my family now laughingly refers to as the “Kerrisdale pace ‘.

Normal moms would take about 20 minutes to get to the IGA on 41st Avenue from where we lived. My faster and more powerful mom would make it there in ten.

I had to go because I took on the role of “Sherpa” when more than two bags of groceries made their way home. For my trouble, a stop at the “Big Scoop” was generally in order. It was a compromise I could deal with.

In those days there were about ten parking stalls behind the IGA. Besides groceries, we could stop to look at toys, buy a hockey stick, try on some jeans etc. etc.

The community centre and pool was and is only a minute walk from the shops.

There was a 62 Chevy Bel Air four door sedan parked in front of our house on those days we walked. It was received in an estate from “long gone uncle John”. It was rarely used though. My dad took the MacDonald bus to his office downtown and we walked or biked everywhere.

In the seventies the IGA bought some property behind the store and leveled the apartment so that people could drive to the IGA instead of taking a 20 minute walk. A sign of things to come as people bought cars at an unprecedented rate.

Our family car inventory over the years pretty much stayed parked when it came to everyday needs. Our community provided most of what we needed within walking distance.

In Kitsilano and in the Westend where I lived in my young adult years, walking through the community to shops, services and restaurants was a pleasure and it is an experience that I am sure we have all enjoyed in various times of our lives here in Metro Vancouver, other Canadian cities or abroad.

Town planning is not an easy exercise but it is clear that Tsawwassen needs some.

Two gas stations at our main intersection does not say vibrant to me and the corner is a not so pleasant reminder of the auto dependent suburban planning of yesteryear.

Some recent comments regarding potential change to our community are telling because they only perpetuate ill- founded adoration of the automobile when we should be considering other options to cut short our love affair with it.

In one letter the writer laments that any increased population will “make it impossible to find a parking place in an already busy town centre”. The point is that we do not want any more parking spots and the impossibility of finding one may be a good thing. Let’s hope!

Town centres are not about parking places anymore. Is it reasonable for someone from Boundary Bay or Pebble Hill to get in their car and drive to the “Town Centre” to pick up some milk and bread? Is that an appropriate and sustainable practise in todays world?

A reasonable planning exercise would afford opportunity for mobility in several community nodes. Hopefully, mobility of the human powered kind.