Petition aims to boost safety for Surrey nursery staff, visitors<\/p>\n
Published 12:01 pm Thursday, June 18, 2026<\/p>\n
A drive to boost safety for staff and customers of a South Surrey nursery is gaining traction.<\/p>\n
Organizers behind an effort to keep a second, temporary route to and from West Coast Gardens open permanently say a petition bearing more than 500 signatures supporting the measure has been submitted to city hall.<\/p>\n
The longstanding nursery, located at 1420 172 St., has historically only been accessible via 172 Street off 16 Avenue. In late April, the city began installing 1.25 kilometres of a new trunk sanitary sewer along 172 Street and 14 Avenue; work that was scheduled to close 172 Street for several weeks.<\/p>\n
To ensure continued access to sites including the nursery and Russell Estate Vineyard until the project\u2019s completion, a temporary route was created via a gravel extension of the existing dead-end 14 Avenue \u2013 accessible from 168 Street \u2013 through to 172 Street.<\/p>\n
That access was initially planned to end following the project\u2019s completion, however, \u201cwe argue this road should be left open,\u201d Suzanne Smith told Peace Arch News by email.<\/p>\n
City officials have confirmed the possibility is being explored.<\/p>\n
Smith, who has a clothing pop-up boutique at the nursery, spearheaded the petition alongside nursery owner Jason Vandermey. She described the 172 Street one-way-in-one-way-out situation as \u201cextremely dangerous, especially when exiting\u2026 onto a busy 16th Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are asking the City of Surrey to consider leaving this road open for a secondary, safer access to the Garden Center for 90 staff, thousands of visitors \u2013 many of whom are elderly. Complaints about this issue have been coming into the garden centre for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom staff also, but customers that frequent our garden centre, they complain all the time,\u201d Vandermey confirmed Monday (June 15).<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say things like, \u2018if 16 Avenue wasn\u2019t so busy, I\u2019d probably come more.\u2019 It\u2019s a bit of a hurdle for people because of the safety aspect.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been some near-misses,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Vandermey said while 172 Street has recently reopened, the concerns remain. He cited a noticeable increase in traffic along 16 Avenue ever since the opening of the thoroughfare\u2019s on- and off-ramps to Highway 99 more than a decade ago. New traffic from area residential developments and the Campbell Heights business park only compounds the issue, he said.<\/p>\n
Retaining the 14 Avenue connection \u2013 which opens the door to motorists accessing either 8 or 16 Avenue from 168 Street \u2013 would only require paving of some 300 metres, and would also smooth the path for emergency vehicles, should the need for them arise, he said.<\/p>\n
Access to the light-controlled intersection at 168 Street and 16 Avenue is another positive for drivers, Vandermey added.<\/p>\n
Petition signatures were only collected in-person at the nursery, he noted.<\/p>\n
Officials with the city\u2019s engineering department confirmed June 16 that the possibility of maintaining the 14 Avenue connection on a permanent basis is being looked at, \u201cto support local community and business access, and connection to a future signal\u201d anticipated at 16 Avenue and 172 Street as part of the Darts Hill neighbourhood plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny potential changes remain subject to ongoing design work, municipal budgets and any required Provincial approvals,\u201d an emailed statement notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Petition aims to boost safety for Surrey nursery staff, visitors Published 12:01 pm Thursday, June 18, 2026 A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-745699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}