Stew Young’s
Record as Mayor
Transportation · Growth & planning

Growth came first.
Young left the planning behind.

For 29 years, Stew Young sold Langford’s growth as a success story. He left office without delivering a transportation master plan to make that growth work. Residents inherited missing sidewalks, disconnected bike routes and congestion. His successors had to plan the catch-up.

Updated September 30, 2026

29 years of growth. No transportation master plan. Young kept pushing development without delivering the long-term plan to connect the city he was building. Langford adopted its first transportation master plans only after voters removed him. See the records

Young built more. He left others to connect it.

Road projects and individual sidewalk improvements did not add up to a citywide delivery plan. Young’s council left the next council to work out how walking, cycling, transit and roads should fit together as Langford grew.

Goals on paper. Gaps on the ground.

The 2008 Official Community Plan called for pedestrian-friendly streets, better walking and cycling connections, and a long-term road network plan. Those promises were already on the books. Young failed to turn them into a transportation master plan with a clear sequence of projects, costs and deadlines to close the gaps.

Langford kept growing around an ageing policy framework. Its transportation goals were too vague about delivery: which missing sidewalk would be built first, when disconnected bike routes would join up, and how the whole network would come together. Residents were left with sidewalks and bike lanes that stop short. The OCP’s first comprehensive refresh since 2008 arrived in 2025, after Young had left office. By then, the framework was 17 years old.

His successors made those plans a priority in their 2023–2027 strategic plan, began work in fall 2024 and adopted them on July 20, 2026. The City calls them its first official long-term guides1 for planning, designing and developing a transportation system across different travel modes. Young had nearly three decades to deliver that framework. He did not.

Young left residents with a broken network.

Young pushed growth without delivering the connected transportation network residents needed. Sidewalks stop short. Bike lanes abruptly end. People walking and cycling have to navigate missing links, difficult crossings and stretches that push them into traffic. This is the patchwork his successors inherited.

The 2026 Active Transportation Plan2 puts those failures on the record. It identifies abruptly ending bike lanes on Langford Parkway, Leigh Road, Peatt Road and Happy Valley Road, alongside missing sidewalks and crossing barriers. Young’s growth story counted new development as progress. Residents still needed a safe way to reach the next street, school or bus stop.

A complete sidewalk to school should not have taken this long.

Millstream Elementary opened in 1959. Young’s entire mayoralty came and went without a complete sidewalk connection along Hoylake Avenue between Treanor Avenue and Millstream Road. In 2025, under the new council, the City included that first complete connection in its school-safety upgrades.

The new council changed the funding. It brought sidewalk work forward by more than a decade. Its 2023 and 2024 budget decisions accelerated the Sidewalk Infill Program, according to the City’s August 2025 statement3. Without that change, residents faced more than ten additional years of waiting for the accelerated work. Young’s council left the gaps and the slower delivery pace behind.

Under the new council, more than $15 million from various funds was committed over three years to sidewalks, protected paths and bike lanes, traffic calming and safer intersections. The next council had to supply both the funding to move these improvements forward and the long-term plans Young had failed to deliver.

The next council had to plan the catch-up.

The adopted Active Transportation Plan maps future walking and cycling networks, identifies missing links and ranks projects for delivery over one to five years, six to ten years, and beyond ten years. It connects the network to a timetable, with costs and funding considerations.

Young had 29 years to connect the city he was building. He left the job unfinished. No transportation master plan. No clear citywide timetable for closing the gaps.

Young left growth without a coherent path forward.

Young promoted development for nearly three decades, then left office without delivering a transportation master plan to connect that growth. His council left residents with a patchwork of unfinished routes and no coordinated delivery plan showing which gaps would be fixed, in what order, at what cost, or by when. Broad promises in an ageing OCP never became that plan.

His successors had to do the work: fund faster sidewalk delivery, map connected walking and cycling networks, and adopt Langford’s first transportation master plans. Young claimed the growth as his legacy. He left the planning and the catch-up to the councils that followed.

Sources

  1. City of Langford, July 27, 2026 announcementFirst Transportation Master Plan and Active Transportation Plan adopted July 20; work began in fall 2024, following the new council’s strategic plan.
  2. Adopted Active Transportation Plan, July 2026Printed pages 24–29: existing conditions and network barriers. Pages 41–46: future walking and cycling networks. Pages 73–82: project evaluation, delivery timelines and costs.
  3. City of Langford, August 29, 2025 safe-routes statementSidewalk infill funding, accelerated delivery and the Hoylake Avenue school connection.