Where is this?
Could be any suburban strip. The woman, unable to navigate the uneven surface of the asphalt sidewalk, is smoking grimly as she steers her electric scooter along the shoulder, confronting the traffic that crowds the road in both directions.
This is Vedder Road (map here), an historic country byway, now a south-Chilliwack arterial, only two lanes wide in this section as it funnels traffic between the Trans-Canada Highway and Cultus Lake. It is one of the saddest strips in a province full of them – every business car dependent, every subdivision feeding more vehicles into overloaded intersections.
As Highway 1 is widened and its interchanges expanded, the future is already being realized at the Vedder interchange (below, click to enlarge), where nearly a square kilometre is completely paved over with surface parking lots, surrounding the one-storey boxes that occupy less than half their sites.
This is the a precursor of the Gateway Effect, as the Trans-Canada Highway is turned into the Main Street of Fraser Valley suburbia, only prevented from merging into one endless strip mall by the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Not that this is the only future possible. At the other end of Vedder Road, on what was once a Canadian Forces base, one of the better examples of New Urbanism continues to build out (its retail village so new it’s not yet on Google.) Garrison Crossing, a project of Canada Lands, is an attempt to build a mixed-use, mixed-density, amenity-rich alternative, with the hope that a walkable design may be sufficient to change the transportation habits of its residents. At the sushi-and-latte end of the social spectrum, it remains in stark contrast to the Vedder-Road reality that flanks its eastern edge.
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2 comments
The woman is not in a wheelchair but an electric scooter. Anyone can buy one of these. She may or may not be disabled.
The extent to which we are responsible for the effects of aging on our bodies is in direct proportion to the care we take of ourselves. The fact that she is a smoker reduces my sympathy for her. Substituting walking (or cycling) for motorized trips has a direct benefit on human health. Building places that enforce auto mobility by removing all other choices is far more social engineering than any transit or bicycling advocate would suggest. Since we still have the tattered remnants of “socialized medicine” we will be paying for these decisions for the next several generations
Regardless, she is a pedestrian and deserves facilities as such.