Surrey’s traffic lights don’t talk to each other. It’s time for the Green Wave.

By William Li

If you drive King George Boulevard from Sullivan to Surrey Central at 8:00 am, you can count the red lights you hit in a row. I’ve done it. It’s a lot. One block, stop. One block, stop. The light ahead turns green just as yours turns red. That isn’t traffic. That’s a system nobody tuned.

I live in Sullivan. There’s no SkyTrain here and the bus decides what time I leave the house, so like most of my neighbours I drive. I work in finance and international trade, which means I read time as money. Every minute a corridor idles is fuel burned, a delivery late, a parent missing pickup, and a bus stuck behind it all.

Surrey is on its way to being the biggest city in BC. It moves like a city that never planned to be.

Here’s what Mike Starchuk and the Imagine Surrey team have committed to. Synchronize Surrey’s traffic lights into one citywide system that responds to traffic in real time instead of running on a timetable. That’s the Green Wave: catch one green, and the next one is already waiting. Buses get priority at key intersections, and the City publishes corridor travel times before and after, so you can see the result.

Signal timing is the cheapest transportation project a city can do. The poles are already there. The software exists. Surrey has even proved it on its own streets. The City tested adaptive signals on seven intersections along 72 Avenue and reported in 2013 that they worked, without pouring a metre of new asphalt. And when the lights on 104 Avenue are timed, the bus on 104 Avenue moves too. That’s the part transit riders should like. It’s the fastest way to speed up a bus that’s already on the road.

It’s part of our bigger Fast Commutes plan, and it comes first for a simple reason. The lights are what the City controls on day one.

The same parties have run City Hall for decades. Your commute is longer now than when they started. The City went to market for new signal controllers in 2022, and again in 2025. The lights on King George still don’t turn green in order.

I came to Canada when I was seven. I studied business at SFU. I’ve spent my career explaining to skeptical people why a deal makes sense, and walking away when it doesn’t. Timing the lights makes sense. It’s the highest return per dollar on Surrey’s list, and it’s been sitting there since 2013.

Two mornings, then. In the first, you leave Sullivan at 7:40, hit a string of reds on King George, and get to Surrey Central at 8:25 behind a bus that’s just as stuck as you are. In the second, the lights are timed, the bus lane is moving, and you’re at your desk before the coffee’s cold. Same road. Different city.

Time is the one thing City Hall can give back without raising your taxes. On October 17, vote for Mike Starchuk and the Imagine Surrey team, and let’s make Surrey move.

William Li, a Sullivan father and international trade executive who serves as Director of Community Service at the Rotary Club of Surrey, is an Imagine Surrey candidate for Surrey City Council.