Monday - May 12, 2025 - Langley council to discuss future of Coghlan Creek Bridge

🌧 High 15C | Special weather statement

Good morning!

I’m pretty proud of my mothering abilities. Not because my children are, on the whole, great kids. And not because I got breakfast in bed from my daughter on Friday rather than Sunday, because she was too excited to give me my gifts. No, I’m pretty proud of my abilities because I have managed to keep last year’s Mother’s Day gift alive for an entire year.

Those of you who read these sections closely may remember that I am a bad plant mom. If it’s not drought resistant, it won’t survive. (I also somehow murdered my lemon tree with too much water, despite my proclivity for drought.) But the New Guinea impatiens my daughter gave me last year is still alive! It is scraggly. It has been brought back from the dead a few times. It’s unlikely if it’ll ever be healthy enough to flower again. But it is very much alive—and that is a pretty great achievement for me.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope 

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

News

No surge in demand for Fraser Valley homes

Along with spring flowers, April usually brings a surge in sales activity. Not this year, though.

Benchmark prices for detached houses in Langley and Chilliwack surged last month, but those figures weren’t accompanied by a surge of demand by buyers. Instead, home sales actually declined month-over-month in some areas.

In Langley 14% fewer homes were sold last month than in March. Even in sluggish home markets, activity tends to increase as the weather improves in spring.

• Today, Tyler breaks down April’s housing market with his monthly series of charts and analysis.

Related

Need to Know

👮‍♀️ Langley Township has taken over an RCMP building that used to be shared between the township and the city [Langley Advance Times]

🚑 At least three people were taken to hospital after a head-on collision between Maple Ridge and Mission Sunday morning [Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News]

🌲 Chilliwack RCMP are asking for help finding two people who may have more information about a fire on Nowell Street last month [Fraser Valley Today]

🌳 A Langley strata is asking the Township to take care of a row of century-old oaks on its property [Langley Advance Times]

🐶 Mussel-sniffing dogs will help BC keep invasive mussels out of Cultus Lake and other BC waterways [Chilliwack Progress]

🥪 A Chilliwack restaurant owner put together 75 bagged lunches for homeless residents on Mother’s Day [Fraser Valley Today]

🔥 A free five-part documentary about BC’s worst wildfire season is now airing, and includes an episode on Lytton [Knowledge Network] / You can find our award-winning coverage of the aftermath of Lytton’s fire here [FVC]

💸 Canada’s unemployment rate increased to 6.9% last month as the country faces an ongoing trade war with the US [Global] / In the Fraser Valley, unemployment is rising in Abbotsford and Mission, although down slightly in Chilliwack [Fraser Valley Today]

🛑 TransLink and others are working on a plan to stop large trucks from hitting overpasses on Highway 1 and elsewhere [CityNews]

🎬 People in BC’s film industry are concerned after US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on movies made outside the States [Vancouver Sun] / You can read our pre-tariff-threat interview with a Mission actor about life in the film industry here [FVC]

🟧 One former MP from BC says the NDP face a ‘Parliament from hell’ without official party status [CBC]

🏢 Own your industrial space in Langley City. Secure your future with the new Lease-to-Own program. Premium small-bay strata units from 3,493 SF. Learn more here.*

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The Agenda

Langley council to discuss future of Coghlan Creek Bridge

Langley Township council will decide tonight whether to spend $575,000 to rehabilitate Coghlan Creek Bridge and get 248th Street open to traffic again.

Coghlan Creek Bridge was built in the 1950s, and carries both vehicle traffic and a Fortis BC gas main. The bridge has been deteriorating for years, with its last rehabilitative work conducted in 2016.

At the end of April, a engineering consultant closed the bridge to all traffic after finding significant infrastructure issues in one retaining wall and two wing walls on the bridge. Traffic has been diverted to a detour route while the bridge has been closed.

Fixing the bridge would cost $575,000. Roughly $440,000 of that money would be taken from leftover funds in the Mufford Overpass rehabilitation project. The remainder would be taken from reserve.

Staff are recommending that council also approve the addition of a temporary bailey bridge for use while the repairs are being planned and designed. That temporary bridge would cost another $382,000 to rent, install, and remove. Staff expect it would need to be in place for two months—in June and July—and removed again for work to take place on the real bridge. (Construction is expected to happen between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, when local fish would be at less risk.)

In order to repair the bridge, the Township of Langley would need approval from the federal government due to the creek’s status as a fish-bearing stream. Although most approvals take over a year to go through the federal system, staff say they hope that the “urgency of the repairs and associated public safety concerns” would expedite the process.

Staff did note that repairs wouldn’t fix the problem in the long term. The engineering consultant recommended replacing the entire bridge, and staff suggested council include design funding for a new bridge in the 2026 budget.

Council will discuss the rehabilitation project and staff’s recommendations during tonight’s council meeting, which will be livestreamed online.

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🗓 Things to do

Live art: Snag in the Valley comes to Abbotsford's Open Space on Thursday from 5 to 9pm. Artists will create their pieces as visitors watch, and will have completed works for sale by raffle. Details online.

Lucas film: The Abbotsford Film Society ends its third season with a screening of George Lucas' 1970s dystopia THX 1138 on Friday. The film screening takes place at the Abbotsford Arts Centre. Doors open at 7:30pm, the film starts at 8pm. Details and tickets online.

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