In the midst of a crackdown on truck parking on farmland in Langley Township, truckers came to council to plead for help finding legitimate places to store their rigs.
In recent months, the Township has heard from rural residents upset about illicit truck lots being set up in South Langley on lots that are within the Agricultural Land Reserve. Township bylaw officers have been handing out tickets and have even taken some property owners to court to stop the practice.
But truckers say the cause of the illegal lots is a dire shortage of legitimate parking sites for large trucks anywhere in the Lower Mainland.
“The commercial trucking industry, it is an essential part of our local economy. It’s the economy on wheels,” said Amit Kumar of the Canadian Trucking Association of B.C.
The shortage has been building for years, and is a pressing issue, Kumar told the council during their Feb. 26 meeting.
He asked the Township to legitimize truck parking on farmland.
“I’m proposing that the Township allow a limited number of trucks to park on participating farms, which in turn can bring a dependable source of income for them,” Kumar said.
It would mean $5,000 to $6,000 a month in income for the farmers, and should be controlled by business licenses, instead of being under the radar, as it is now, Kumar said.
Also asking the council for help was Parminder Sanghera of Reliance Logistics, who says he employs many truckers who have difficulty finding anywhere to leave their trucks that is secure, and close to where they can afford to live.
“For the past 20 years we have been struggling with a parking problem that is a direct result of neglect from both the city and the provincial government,” Sanghera said.
He noted that when the ALR was created in the early 1970s, the province had about two million people. It’s now over 5.2 million.
While the council was sympathetic to the problems faced by truckers, there was some skepticism to the idea of using farmland for truck parking.
Councillor Misty vanPopta asked Kumar about issues with getting parking sites on non-ALR land.
“The problem is there an acute shortage of industrial space,” Kumar said. “We’re competing with the warehousing industry for $5 million to $7 million an acre.”
Mayor Eric Woodward said the Township is giving out temporary park trucking permits on non-ALR land and looking at designating more sites for truck parking to help east the shortage, but noted that long-term, this is an issue that Metro Vancouver or the province will have to take up, as it needs a regional approach.
He also said that even if the Township gave the nod to truck parking on ALR land, it’s likely the Agricultural Land Commission would balk.
“Very few of those are approved,” he said of non-farm use applications.
Later in the meeting, council voted on an agreement for new infrastructure for a site in the 26200 block of 29th Avenue in Aldergrove’s industrial area. Coun. Kim Richter noted that when the site had come before council some years before, it had been proposed for a truck parking site.
Staff confirmed that was correct, but now the owner wants to develop the site as a multi-tenant industrial development, covering 2.4 acres of land. There has been a shortage of developable industrial land in the Lower Mainland for years.