Surrey council has instructed city staff to ask the provincial government if Class 1 drivers licensing services can be designated elsewhere than Newton, in response to a motion seeking to curb commercial truck driving students from local streets during rush-hour traffic.
This was at the Monday June 19 council meeting.
Coun. Pardeep Kooner on June 5 presented a notice of motion that council ask city staff to report on how many Class 1 driving school business licenses have been issued by the City of Surrey as compared to Langley and Delta, to investigate the possibility of having student truck drivers limit their hours of practice during rush hour and refrain during those hours from practicing on the main roads of the city – especially in the Newton industrial area – and for city staff to explore amending business license requirements such as the hours of practice for Class 1 students and not practicing driving during the rush hours.
Coun. Linda Annis said while she supports seeing what Surrey’s stats are compared to other cities it’s “vitally important” that drivers learn to drive in all types of traffic situations, “otherwise, how will they ever learn?”
Coun. Doug Elford said while he could relate to Kooner’s motion “having been stuck behind a student driver” the day before, he struggles with it because the driver training facility is based in Newton and is closed in the evening. “There’s a necessity for these trucks to be in the neighbourhood due to the fact that they require their licensing so I don’t know how a bylaw would get around this, so I find this very challenging, this motion,” Elford said.
Coun. Mandeep Nagra agreed with Kooner that there is a problem. He suggested that the City of Surrey send a letter to the provincial government asking it to move the driver training facility elsewhere, “maybe in Campbell Heights or any other place, or some industrial areas like Bridgeview, so that all these businesses can move out of Newton and, you know, we can fix this problem.”
Kooner replied that in the short term something has to be done, “given the amount of traffic that we have.
“Having someone who is just learning how to drive in rush hour is probably not the best use of the time. I think there should be at least a certain level of hours that they’ve had before they get to that part and when they’re driving in rush hour.”
Coun. Rob Stutt offered up an amendment to the motion which council approved. He pointed out that not all licensing facilities in B.C. test for Class 1 licences “and perhaps that’s what we should be looking for, is another designation for the testing.
“Perhaps it doesn’t need to be in Surrey,” Stutt said. “There’s only certain centres that do test for Class 1 licences and perhaps Surrey, particularly Newton, isn’t the right one. As we all know, trucks are big, heavy dangerous things if not they’re not handled capably and I do agree that perhaps there should be some level of competency before somebody drives a truck in busy rush hour traffic as we have in Surrey.”
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