Angela Girard's Priorities
Priority – Less Time In Your Car
Re-elect me on October 17, 2026 and I will continue to push for quicker, more reliable transit, safer streets and sidewalks for all users, and real alternatives to driving
- Get rapid transit across the Inlet — a fixed, frequent connection on and off the North Shore is the single biggest change available to us, and it needs to move faster than it is
- Keep pressing senior governments and TransLink — the projects that matter most aren’t ours to build, which makes advocacy part of the job, not a substitute for it
- Keep the North Shore speaking with one voice — North Shore Connects brings three municipalities and two First Nations governments to the table together, because traffic doesn’t stop at municipal boundaries
- Deliver the City’s Mobility Strategy — making the short trips easy to do on foot, by bike or by bus takes cars off the road at the times we’re most congested
- Build the All Ages and Abilities bike network — connected, protected routes that an eight-year-old or an eighty-year-old can actually use, not painted lines beside moving traffic. That includes finishing the Eastside Connector, linking Grand Boulevard through the Crosscut Bridge to Casano Drive
- Safer streets and sidewalks for everyone — more sidewalks, more marked crossings, better lighting and safer intersections, plus sensible rules for e-bikes and scooters so sidewalks stay safe for people on foot
- Back the Safe and Active School Travel Program — better crossings and sidewalks around schools mean fewer cars in the drop-off line, and kids who arrive having moved their bodies and talked to someone
- Study the Low Level Road extension and the Highway 1 corridor — evaluate whether an east-west connector relieves Marine Drive, and work with the Province on a long-term plan for the Upper Levels
Why this matters to me and my community
People here don’t sit in traffic because they want to. They sit in traffic because housing they can afford is somewhere else, and the alternatives to driving aren’t good enough yet. Those two problems are the same problem, and neither gets solved by widening a road.
We have two bridges and a limited number of ways on and off the North Shore. We cannot build our way out of that. The congestion backs up onto City streets, cuts off neighbourhoods near the Second Narrows, and makes it harder for businesses here to hire and keep the people they need.
What we can do is give people real choices — frequent transit, safe bike routes, neighbourhoods where the trip to school or the grocery store doesn’t require a car — so that the road space we have goes further.
Two things that open this year show what that looks like. Translink has extended the R2 RapidBus from Phibbs Exchange through to Metrotown, putting Park Royal within a direct ride of the Expo and Millennium Lines. In August, the Crosscut Bridge opened over Highway 1 — a $17 million project the City built with the Province and TransLink, reconnecting the Loutet and Cedar Village neighbourhoods that the highway separated in the 1960s. Neither of those happened without years of pushing, and North Shore Connects is why the pushing works.
Most of the rest depends on decisions made in Victoria and at TransLink. But there is still plenty the City can do on its own. Safe street design, bike infrastructure, how we manage curb space, and where we allow density are all Council decisions, and I’ve supported the work on all of them — including new rules for the e-bikes and scooters that are now part of how people get around.
The goal is straightforward: spend less of your life in a vehicle and more of it in our community.
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Angela Girard is a great Councillor and caring leader in the City. I admire her passion in building a more liveable city for all, and she effectively delivered so by promoting multiculturalism and better mobility options at every opportunity possible. Her vast experience and understanding of small businesses make her a trustworthy advisor and integral part of the business community in parts of the City. Angela is approachable, genuine and always puts others first. I feel so lucky to have known her and wholeheartedly support her to be our Councillor again.
— Tony Sun, Owner, Reckless Shipyards eBikes & More, Former Board Member, Lower Lonsdale BIA & North Vancouver Resident