Coquitlam's Transit-Oriented Areas: What 800 Metres From SkyTrain Changes

Coquitlam has eight SkyTrain stations with a Transit-Oriented Area around them. If your property sits within 800 metres of one, a different set of rules applies to it than to a house a block further out. Here is what that means in practice.

What a Transit-Oriented Area is

Under provincial legislation, municipalities had to designate the land around rapid transit stations and allow minimum heights and densities there. Coquitlam did this through Bylaw No. 5393, 2024.

The designated stations are Braid, Burquitlam, Coquitlam Central, Inlet Centre, Lafarge Lake-Douglas, Lincoln, Lougheed Town Centre and Moody Centre. Several of those stations sit in Port Moody, Burnaby or New Westminster, but their 800 metre circles cross into Coquitlam, so Coquitlam had to designate the land on its side.

The three tiers

Around a SkyTrain station the land is split by walking distance:

Tier	Distance from station	Minimum height	Minimum floor area ratio
Tier 1	up to 200 m	20 storeys	5.0
Tier 2	200 m to 400 m	12 storeys	4.0
Tier 3	400 m to 800 m	8 storeys	3.0

Two things about this table are easy to misread.

The province is setting a floor. It is telling the city what it must be prepared to allow, and Coquitlam can allow more. What the city cannot do is approve a rezoning that falls below the minimum.

A designation leaves your lot as it is. Someone still has to apply to build, and the city still has to approve it.

Floor area ratio is the total floor area of a building divided by the lot area. To put 5.0 in perspective, Coquitlam's small-scale residential zones allow between 0.5 and 0.85, so a tier 1 site is allowed several times the floor area of a typical fourplex lot.

Parking, which is the change residents notice first

Coquitlam's zoning bylaw says off-street parking spaces are not required for residential buildings inside a Transit-Oriented Area, apart from accessible parking for people with disabilities.

Developers still build parking, because buyers and lenders expect it and because a building with none is hard to sell. The change is that the city itself no longer sets a minimum, so the amount is now the developer's decision.

There is a middle category too. The bylaw identifies Evergreen Line Shoulder Station Areas in Schedule O, where townhouses and apartments need 0.85 spaces per studio or one-bedroom home, 1.25 spaces per home with two or more bedrooms, and 0.15 visitor spaces per home. That sits between the full requirement and none.

Why small-scale housing does not apply here

When Coquitlam rezoned most single-family lots into its new R-1 to R-4 small-scale zones in June 2025, properties inside Transit-Oriented Areas kept their previous zoning.

The reason is straightforward. The city is not required to permit three to six unit small-scale housing in these areas, and it cannot approve a rezoning that falls below the provincial minimums. A fourplex on a tier 1 site would come in far under 5.0 floor area ratio, so the small-scale path does not fit there.

The practical result is that two houses on the same street can sit under completely different rules, depending on which side of an 800 metre line they fall.

What this means if you own here

If you own a house inside one of these areas, three things follow.

1. Your land has a different ceiling. What a developer could eventually build on an assembled group of lots is higher than it was, and that feeds into what the land is worth to that buyer.
2. A developer's price and a homeowner's price are not the same number. Land assembly value depends on the neighbours agreeing too. A single lot in the middle of a block of holdouts is worth what a homeowner will pay for it.
3. Your street will change. Over the coming years, expect more applications, more construction, and views that may not stay the same.

What this means if you are buying

Ask which tier the property falls in, and look at the station map published as a schedule to Bylaw No. 5393, 2024. Boundaries follow lot lines rather than a tidy circle, so a map is worth more than a measurement on a phone.

Then decide honestly which buyer you are. If you want a quiet street that looks the same in ten years, a tier 1 or tier 2 lot is the wrong purchase at any price. If you want a walk to SkyTrain and do not mind cranes, it may be exactly right.

Our Coquitlam Town Centre buyer's guide covers what living around Lafarge Lake and Coquitlam Central is actually like.

What this comes down to

• Coquitlam designated eight Transit-Oriented Areas under Bylaw No. 5393, 2024, covering land within 800 metres of its SkyTrain stations.
• The tiers are 0 to 200 metres, 200 to 400 metres and 400 to 800 metres, with provincial minimums of 20, 12 and 8 storeys.
• Residential parking minimums are removed inside these areas, apart from accessible parking.
• Small-scale multi-unit housing rules do not apply inside them, so those lots kept their old zoning.
• Contact our team to find out which tier a specific Coquitlam property falls in, or browse listings near the Evergreen Line.

Plan your next step

Read the Coquitlam area page for how the neighbourhoods differ, and use neighbourhood checks to walk the actual route from a candidate home to the station before you decide.