The Hastings SkyTrain alternate reality.

Having a couple leftover maps and newspaper clippings from my researches into Vancouver’s unrealized rapid transit plans, I thought I should find an excuse to share them.

Here it is: a commenter on my post on the Edmonds-Cariboo SkyTrain extension quibbled with my assessment that this widely hated late ’80s proposal might have been a better deal than the Millennium Line that was built instead.

This is a reasonable quibble. I’m not all that sure myself. Although I’ve hinted here and there, I’ve never really spelled out my conjecture that the Millennium Line was a wrong turn, and that Vancouver might have been better off sticking to its earlier plan for four routes radiating from the Central Business District:

Source: Vancouver Richmond Rapid Transit Project, N.D. Lea Consultants / Reid Crowther and Partners, 1990.

A. North to the North Shore.
B. East along Hastings Street.
C. Southeast to New Westminster and Surrey.
D. South to Richmond.

Routes C and D are today’s Expo and Canada Lines.

Route A still gets a flutter of interest now and then, most recently in 2017 when the outgoing mayor of North Vancouver pitched a tunnelled Waterfront Station-Lonsdale Quay SkyTrain to take some pressure off the overloaded bridges.

And though it’s largely been forgotten now, as late as the 1990s transit officials had hazy notions of going ahead with route B, which would have entailed extending the Expo Line eastward from its current terminus at Waterfront Station to a Park & Ride at the PNE.

There appear to be no technical obstacles to extending SkyTrain beyond Waterfront. [1] In fact the idea was considered in the early stages of planning for what became the Canada Line. In this study from 1990, the routes marked G1-5, H1-5, and I1-5 would have looped the Expo Line southward toward Richmond via a tunnel entrance just east of Waterfront Station:

Source: Vancouver Richmond Rapid Transit Project, N.D. Lea Consultants / Reid Crowther and Partners, 1990.

These routes were ruled out as they would have required burrowing under architecturally sensitive Gastown.

Suppose the Expo Line had instead been extended eastward. Rather than undermining Gastown, the line might have followed the harbourfront at surface level or on elevated rails, and crossed south to Hastings in one of the less-cherished neighbourhoods to the east. From there it might have proceeded either overhead or via tunnel to Hastings Park and the PNE.

At some later date, whenever it came time to replace one of the two existing Second Narrows crossings, the line could be affordably extended across the new bridge to the North Shore – as in this map from a 1994 study: [2]

Source: North Shore Transit Options, BC Transit, 1994.

But let’s assume that the extension terminated at the PNE. In that case the whole length would be about six kilometres. Travel time would be roughly ten minutes, versus twenty by express bus.

In the 1990s, BC Transit might easily have scrimped and built the whole thing on elevated rails, for around $60 million per kilometre, $360 million overall. [3] It would have been damned as a blot on the skyline, of course, but by now everyone would be used to it. And imagine the views from the train windows!

In recent decades, Vancouver’s centre of gravity has been drifting eastward, bringing wealthy new residents and rising prices to the East Hastings area. If TransLink (BC Transit’s successor agency) were to attempt a Hastings SkyTrain now, they’d be obliged to defer to concerns about community impacts and tunnel the whole way, at a cost approaching the half-billion dollars per kilometre budgeted for the upcoming Broadway extension.

Therefore I’m afraid that by the time such a line becomes necessary it’ll be too pricy to build. (See my post on rapid transit in the era of cost disease.)

In any case, the construction of the Millennium Line on a parallel route a couple kilometres further south has made the prospect of a future Hastings SkyTrain quite remote. A pity, because:

• As shown in the maps below, the Hastings extension would have linked a number of densely-populated, rental-heavy, and transit-dependent neighbourhoods;
• It would have serviced the eastern edge of Gastown, the Port of Vancouver, the Pacific Coliseum, and the PNE – all potential high-volume destinations;
• It would have brought rapid transit to a new region of the city, instead of concentrating service in a narrow triangle of Vancouver’s east side;
• Consequently it would have enjoyed high ridership from day one, rather than underperforming as the Millennium Line did in its early years. [4]

Based on a map by Anthony Smith.

Based on a map by Anthony Smith.
For the assumptions behind this fanciful map, see [5].

Okay, okay, I foresee your objection: my maps conveniently cut off everything east of Boundary Road, while the Millennium Line extends clear across Burnaby and into Coquitlam. Which brings us to…

The Edmonds-Cariboo SkyTrain alternate reality.

I don’t begrudge the residents of central Burnaby and East Vancouver the speed and convenience of the Millennium Line. I rode it for a while myself.

But SkyTrain wasn’t built through those neighbourhoods in response to demand from existing residents. It was built there because Lougheed Highway was a big, wide road with nothing much on either side of it – meaning construction would be cheap, and the new line would spur the profitable redevelopment of low-density residential and light industrial properties along its route.

As I discussed in my 2015 post on planners versus riders, there’s nothing wrong with using rapid transit to shape the growth of the city. The downside is that in the short term, while your new line is used only by the few pioneers willing to live along its largely barren route, commuters who elected to live in already-developed neighbourhoods are stuck riding overcrowded buses.

This is particularly annoying because on a busy corridor like, say, Hastings Street, buses are constantly having to slow down for red lights, pedestrians, and cars backing into tight parking spots. Meanwhile a road like Lougheed, with its mile-long blocks, empty shoulders, and lack of pedestrians, is a perfect spot for high-speed bus service. For the cost of a single SkyTrain station an express bus lane could have been built clear across Burnaby.

Of course, the Millennium Line wasn’t built solely to spur development along Lougheed Highway. The goal was always to connect busy downtown Coquitlam, in the far northeast, with the even busier Broadway corridor.

For cost-saving reasons the lightly populated middle section was built first. Then the more technically challenging Lougheed Mall-Coquitlam stretch. Now, a couple decades into the new millennium, we’re getting serious about extending it to West Broadway – the neighbourhood whose population density and employment opportunities will at last justify the line’s existence.

The Millennium Line’s defenders will say that without the middle stretch the route would make no sense. But the Edmonds-Cariboo extension proposed in the late 1980s was meant as a cheap-and-easy shortcut to Coquitlam.

Under this option a Coquitlam-downtown Vancouver trip would have been just as quick as it is today, and wouldn’t have required a transfer. Because the route was substantially less costly to build, it could have been in service years sooner.

The route was ruled out in 1991 by the incoming NDP government, who in opposition had derided SkyTrain as a “big white elephant”. [6] They may have had a point! But after a few extra years of dawdling the NDP decided they liked the technology after all, and the Millennium Line was born.

Suppose the Edmonds-Cariboo route had been chosen, and the line subsequently extended from Lougheed Town Centre to Coquitlam, as in the above map. The advantages I’ve already outlined. What about the drawbacks?

• Several neighbourhoods that have enjoyed an economic boost from the proximity of the Millennium Line would instead have remained neglected. (Some residents might see this as benign neglect.) [7] However, much of that development would have been redirected to stops on the Edmonds-Cariboo route.
• The network would have lacked the redundancy that the Millennium Line provides. Currently when a train breaks down on the central portion of the Expo Line commuters can bypass the obstruction via the Millennium Line. This is no small thing! (The completion of the Broadway extension will add another sorely needed bypass route.)
• The overcrowding that currently afflicts the Expo Line between downtown and Commercial-Broadway Station (where it intersects with the Millennium Line) would instead persist all the way to Royal Oak. This might be mitigated by turning around some percentage of eastbound trains at Edmonds Station, but it is a serious shortcoming of the Edmonds-Cariboo design.
• Without the middle stretch of the Millennium Line there would be no obvious way to link a future Broadway extension to the original SkyTrain network. It would have to be built as an independent line (like the Canada Line) with its own train yard and maintenance facility.

I see these drawbacks as serious but not decisive. I suspect that over in the alternate reality where the Edmonds-Cariboo and Hastings routes were completed there are transit nerds speculating about the missed opportunity of the Broadway-Lougheed SkyTrain, with similarly equivocal results.

M.

1. The option of extending the Expo Line beyond Waterfront Station will be closed off if the City of Vancouver ever follows through on its plans for a pedestrian plaza over the train platforms there. Although the plans leave a contingency for an additional commuter rail platform, they appear to rule out any future rapid transit line – tunneled or aboveground, north or eastbound – that might terminate there.

2. The 1994 BC Transit study North Shore Transit Options examined three different corridors by which SkyTrain could be brought to North and West Vancouver – via the First Narrows, Second Narrows, or a tunnel directly connecting Waterfront Station and Lonsdale Quay. The authors’ verdict:

[R]ail based transit was considered not to be a viable alternative in either the short or long term for the following reasons:

Low Ridership: … For ridership to reach the level that would make it cost-effective, a single rail link would be required to capture over 75% of all peak period, peak direction travel across Burrard Inlet. Given the distinct market areas for travel across Burrard Inlet, there is no single corridor which is likely to achieve this level of demand….

Minimal Travel Time Savings: … Most users of a rapid transit link to the North Shore would be required to travel to a rail station by bus and then transfer to the rail system. Transferring has been shown to be a deterrent to increasing transit ridership. With a relatively short trip across the inlet, it is likely that any travel time savings of a rail system would be offset by the need to transfer.

High Cost: … In 1989, a SkyTrain link between Waterfront Station and Lonsdale Quay was estimated to cost over $400 million…. There would also be a cost in getting rail transit to and from a new crossing.

Since (unlike the other routes discussed in this post) a North Shore rapid transit link remains a live, if remote, possibility, the study is still worth a read. You can find a copy at the downtown library.

3. My extremely crude cost estimate for the Hastings extension is based on the per-kilometre price of the mostly elevated Millennium Line, built in 2002.

4. “Second SkyTrain line lags behind predictions,” Surrey / North Delta Leader, May 20, 2005. Three years after the opening of the Millennium Line, TransLink officials were putting an optimistic spin on ridership figures that were well below projections.

5. In mapping my hypothetical Hastings extension I’ve tried to stick to what might actually have been approved in the 1990s. If I’ve cheated it’s by being unrealistically generous in the spacing of stations: I’ve located them at Main Street, Clark, Nanaimo, Renfrew, and Highway 1.

A real-world version might easily look like Exhibit IX, above, with one crummy stop (at Commercial Drive) between Main Street and the PNE.

6. “NDP calls SkyTrain big white elephant,” Vancouver Sun, May 4, 1988. Opposition MLA Bob Williams complains about a 3-cents-per-litre gasoline tax to pay for SkyTrain; Finance Minister Mel Couvelier points to how many construction jobs were created and says the project “met all our objectives”.

7. “Transit Studying East Van Link,” Vancouver Courier, April 17, 1991. From a moment in history when Vancouver’s city council and a significant bloc of its citizens were united in resistance to what would become the Millennium Line. To quote a member of HASTE (Homeowners Against SkyTrain Effects): “SkyTrain is a raucous, screeching, horrible machine that has no place in residential neighbourhoods.”

A SkyTrain historical footnote: The Edmonds-Cariboo extension.

To my handful of regular readers: I apologize for these articles about Vancouver’s SkyTrain that are of very slight interest to local transit nerds, and of no interest at all to anyone else. I promise to return in the future to sexier topics, like the novels of C.P. Snow and illustrations in old editions of Pilgrim’s Progress.

—

While researching last month’s post on unrealized Vancouver rapid transit plans, I became curious about an abandoned plan from the late 1980s / early 1990s to extend the SkyTrain to Burnaby’s Lougheed Mall – not from New Westminster, as eventually happened, but from the vicinity of Edmonds Station.

For instance, this confusing map from a 1989 report draws a thick black line from the then-existing SkyTrain (which isn’t shown) through Burnaby’s Cariboo Heights neighbourhood to a proposed park-and-ride station at the Lougheed Mall, and onward to Coquitlam.

Source: Mainland-Southwest Region 2 Transportation Committee Recommendations, 1989.

This 1991 map from the Vancouver Sun more clearly lays out the two routes then in contention:

Source: Vancouver Sun, Apr. 26, 1991.

To my annoyance, the handful of documents I could find online that referenced the Edmonds-Cariboo route were extremely vague about its alignment, where it would have joined the existing line, where its stations would have been located – were they seriously going to omit a stop at Edmonds & Kingsway? – and why it was eventually abandoned.

In the end I had to schlep around to the UBC, Burnaby, and Vancouver Central libraries to track down the information I needed. As a public service I’m publishing it here to save future researchers the trouble.

***

The original SkyTrain line opened just in time for Expo ’86, hence the name by which it’s known today – the Expo Line.

In the late 1980s work was underway to extend the line across the Fraser River to Surrey from its original terminus in New Westminster. With three of Greater Vancouver’s designated Regional Town Centres linked to the downtown core by rapid transit, the next step was to hook up the fourth, Coquitlam, as visualized in this 1975 map:

Source: The Livable Region 1976/1986, Greater Vancouver Regional District, 1975.

The trouble with this route was that from Coquitlam’s point of view (to quote Burnaby’s Director of Planning, Anthony Parr),

it did not present rapid transit as an attractive means of travel to Downtown Vancouver … because of the need to double back and dog leg via New Westminster. [1]

The Edmonds-Cariboo route would have straightened out the dog-leg, bypassing New Westminster via a shortcut through Burnaby’s Cariboo Heights and Edmonds neighbourhoods, shaving almost ten minutes off a SkyTrain ride from the Lougheed Mall to downtown.

In terms of travel time, here’s how the proposed route would have compared to the network as it was actually built. (Travel times are from TransLink.)

Lougheed Station to Granville Station via:

• Millennium Line (transfer at Commercial-Broadway Station): 26 minutes
• Expo Line (via New Westminster; no transfer): 36 minutes
• Edmonds-Cariboo extension (no transfer): 26 minutes

The downside was that this extension would have run through some quiet suburban neighbourhoods whose residents could be expected to raise a fuss – and they did.

The Edmonds-Cariboo route: 1986

As Anthony Parr put it in a 1986 memo to his boss, Burnaby’s Municipal Manager,

At this stage the … design that we have before us is no more than a conceptual representation – a dotted line on a map.

Parr is referring to BC Transit’s 1986 SkyTrain Extension to Coquitlam Transit Planning Study Summary Report, [1] which evaluated four possible routes connecting the Lougheed Mall and Coquitlam with the existing SkyTrain, as shown in the maps below.

Source: SkyTrain Extension to Coquitlam Transit Planning Study Summary Report, BC Transit, 1986. [1]

Here’s how the authors of that report described the Edmonds-Cariboo option:

[T]his route would leave the existing line just before the Edmonds Station and use the abandoned B.C. Hydro alignment to the old Edmonds Loop.

The old BC Hydro alignment was subsequently turned into a walking path, the Highland Park Line trail. The Edmonds bus loop was at the corner of Edmonds & Kingsway.

Note that in every variation of the Edmonds-Cariboo route, the extension would have bypassed Edmonds Station. The transfer point would have been Royal Oak.

The report continues:

However, the line would encounter residential property even if the old right-of-way were utilized as one condominium development has been built very close to the south side of the R.O.W. and there are now three major high rise apartments on the north side. After crossing Kingsway, the line would follow Edmonds to a station at Canada Way. Since this section is primarily secondary commercial operations with the occasional old residential property, the extension could provide an opportunity to redevelop these properties to screen the Skytrain from nearby residences and to provide off-street parking. Most of the newer structures are adequately set back from the street.

The distance from Royal Oak to the next station at Canada Way would have been about 3.75 kilometres – almost as far as from Burquitlam to Moody Centre on the Millennium Line, the longest gap on today’s SkyTrain system.

Despite this weirdly long gap, there’s no mention of a station at the busy intersection of Edmonds & Kingsway. (This would be addressed in a subsequent report: see next section.) I suppose they were prioritizing speed and cost-whittling in order to make this option competitive with the New Westminster route.

It illustrates the tendency of early SkyTrain planners to avoid putting stations where transit riders might actually want to go, opting instead for brownfield sites where entirely new developments could be built around them…for instance, in a forest next to a freeway interchange (see below)…

After the Canada Way station, the line would continue north-east, enter Robert Burnaby Park at Sixth Street …

(That’s a goof: the western boundary of the park is at Fourth. The elevated guiderails would have loomed over a block of modest single-family homes on Edmonds Street between Sixth and Fourth.)

…and follow a proposed highway alignment through the undeveloped portion of both the park and the George Derby Veterans Affairs Hospital to a station south of the Stormont Interchange on Highway 1. Not only would this Cariboo Station provide a large Park & Ride lot with convenient access to Highway 1, Burnaby has plans for approximately 1500 units of medium density housing in the area.

The Stormont Interchange is Highway 1’s Gaglardi Way exit. I was unaware that there were once plans for a road – the Stormont Connector – that would have slashed across southeast Burnaby from this interchange to New Westminster’s McBride Avenue.

The line would then continue on a relatively high elevated section crossing Cariboo Road, the Brunette River, the Burlington Northern Railway and Highway 1. The route would proceed through a heavily-developed residential area to a station in the vicinity of Lougheed Mall.

The Edmonds-Cariboo route: 1991

Five years later, little progress had been made in advancing beyond the “dotted line on a map” stage.

In the interim, the provincial government had appointed a Coquitlam SkyTrain Route Advisory Committee to evaluate the various corridors, with construction of the first segment to Lougheed Mall slated to begin in mid-1992.

By 1991, as shown in a BC Transit pamphlet from that year called SkyTrain Coquitlam Extension, [2] the Advisory Committee had managed to nix one of the Lougheed Mall-Coquitlam routes. However, an East Broadway / Lougheed Highway option had been tossed into the mix:

Source: SkyTrain Coquitlam Extension, BC Transit, 1991. [2]

(Sometime during the preparation of that pamphlet, an asterisk was added to the specs for the Broadway-Lougheed corridor. The Advisory Committee, it was explained, had rejected the route due to its much higher cost and opposition from Vancouver city council. But the Broadway-Lougheed route wasn’t to be counted out just yet…)

I haven’t been able to locate the report of the Advisory Comittee from which the information in the above pamphlet derives. I did find this Burnaby Now story by Dan Hilborn, from May 1, 1991, describing in some detail three variations of the Edmonds-Cariboo route. [3]

The first option would require the relocation of virtually every business on the south side of Edmonds Street at BC Transit’s expense. Going underground would raise the price by $60 million.

Under the plan, construction would be phased-in and property owners will be given the chance to relocate within blocks of their original location as the guideway is completed.

The second option follows the property line between Edmonds and 19th Avenue, and requires the purchase of 39 homes before reaching Sixth Street. It would allow for a linear park connecting Byrne Creek Ravine, Powerhouse [Park] and a proposed park at the corner of Canada Way and Edmonds.

Either of the two options will require the acquisition of another 16 homes and blocking views at five or eight residences on Edmonds between Sixth Street and the southern end of Robert Burnaby Park. The document does not state which side of the street the guideway will follow.

The third option along a northbound BC Hydro right of way requires no property acquisitions, but comes closer to a neighborhood of new homes around Imperial Street than to the proposed Edmonds Town Centre.

No matter which of three proposals is chosen, two homes and a small industrial property near Powerhouse Park must be purchased. The line will then come within 25 metres of two existing apartment complexes and follow the BC Hydro right of way to Kingsway and Edmonds.

Although a Kingsway Station co-developed with private business is described in the written report, the accompanying maps show the first stop at Canada Way Station.

The 6.7 kilometre Edmonds-Cariboo line will cost an estimated $245 million, carry about 10.6 million passengers annually and take 26 minutes from Lougheed Mall to downtown Vancouver.

If Edmonds is chosen, the alignment will traverse Robert Burnaby Park, wind its way along the Stormont right-of-way to a 1,000-2,000 space park and ride Sky Train Station near Cariboo Road, and follow the #1 Highway and Government Road to Lougheed Mall.

Source: “SkyTrain route debate”, Burnaby Now, May 1, 1991. [3]

So why didn’t it get built?

It was clear early on which way BC Transit and the province were leaning. Premier Bill Vander Zalm and Transportation Minister Rita Johnston – who would succeed Vander Zalm as premier – had both indicated their preference for the Edmonds-Cariboo route.

BC Transit President Mike O’Connor was quoted saying of the Columbia-Brunette corridor, “Technically, it doesn’t look that sound to us.” He went on:

“The most sound route from a technical point of view is the Edmonds corridor. It does more for the transit system as a whole.” [4]

In April of 1991 a leaked memo from Tom Parkinson, project manager of the Coquitlam SkyTrain extension, indicated near-unanimous support by the Advisory Committee for the Edmonds-Lougheed route:

“I am confident of the data – which now points clearly at Edmonds-Cariboo. Port Moody, Coquitlam, and Port Coquitlam have endorsed this choice.

“The New Westminster members of the Coquitlam advisory committee and (former Burnaby mayor Bill) Lewarne say they will do so at the very end, leaving [Burnaby councillor] Doug Drummond as a single no-sayer.”

BC Transit’s O’Connor was obliged to clarify his project manager’s comments:

“The Edmonds alternative – from a ridership, cost-per-ride, distance to downtown – is better. But that doesn’t mean it’s the one that is going to be chosen. There are other reasons to choose. …

“What I think Tom meant to say was that the committee, I think, accepts that technical data that that route has the best technical merit.”

After the leak, which led to the project manager’s removal, a New Westminster member of the Advisory Committee resigned, saying that the technical committee “seemed to be pointing toward a conclusion and didn’t seem to be leaving alternatives.” [5]

There followed a flurry of comments in the local media accusing the provincial government of “skullduggery”, [6] of having “juggled” the cost estimates, [7] of packing the “sham” Advisory Committee with Social Credit party hacks who were “rigging” its deliberations. [8]

When BC Transit went ahead with its promised community engagement, Burnaby Now‘s story emphasized the exasperation of the community:

“Disappointed” was the most common expression from the estimated 500 people who attended two SkyTrain Open Houses held at the Edmonds Community Centre on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

The surprising absence of all members of the SkyTrain advisory committee, a simple roughed-in map of the ‘Cariboo corridor’ and unanswered technical questions made the forums totally inadequate, said south Burnaby residents interviewed by Burnaby Now. [9]

BC Transit community relations officer Kim Rasberry explains the Broadway-Lougheed SkyTrain corridor route to Toby Louie.
Photo: Paul Clarke, Burnaby Now, May 12, 1991.

Much of this nitpicking, no doubt, was politically motivated. Despite having swapped out scandal-crippled premier Vander Zalm for the comparatively unhated Johnston, after fifteen years in power the Socred government was plumbing new depths of popular disapproval.

Bending to the onslaught of bad press, the government announced an independent review to determine “whether BC Transit data was biased in favour of the Edmonds-Cariboo corridor and why the Lougheed-Broadway proposal was pulled from the government’s terms of reference.” [10]

I could find no mention in the local press of the results of this review. But it didn’t really matter: what killed the Edmonds-Cariboo route was the utter walloping of the Socreds in the general election of fall, 1991.

The incoming New Democratic Party, citing the “massive provincial deficit now estimated at more than $2 billion”, announced that the extension to Lougheed Mall would be put off until “at least 1993” [11] and that the Socred-appointed Coquitlam SkyTrain Route Advisory Committee would be dissolved, later to be replaced by a new group, the Northeast Sector Rapid Transit Committee, whose very name communicated that the menu of options had been expanded yet again. [12]

In opposition the NDP had attacked SkyTrain as a ruinously expensive Socred hobbyhorse. The new committee would give both the Broadway-Lougheed and Hastings corridors a fresh look, but the minister now responsible for BC Transit (and future premier), Glen Clark, was “not impressed with SkyTrain technology” and was “looking closely at commuter rail as a relatively inexpensive and easy-to-implement interim answer”. [13]

Thus the first major transit project undertaken by the new government was the West Coast Express, introduced in 1995: five daily commuter trains each way between Mission and downtown Vancouver. Not exactly the rapid transit solution Coquitlam residents had been promised, but better than nothing.

As for what would eventually become the Millennium Line, it had to endure a half-decade of NDP second-guesses and changes-of-heart between its announcement in 1995 as a street-level LRT linking Coquitlam to Arbutus Street along the Broadway-Lougheed Corridor and its eventual opening in 2002 as a mostly-elevated SkyTrain extension from New Westminster to Commercial Drive.

By that time Glen Clark had been chased from the premier’s office amid a cloud of scandal, just like Vander Zalm a decade before.

***

In the 2020s, as the Millennium Line is extended down West Broadway – finally completing the route promised by the previous NDP government way back in 1995 – I fear we’re going to be confronted with the main shortcoming of the network design we’ve chosen: that it funnels so many commuters into just two overcrowded pipes entering the downtown core.

With this in mind, I can’t help but wonder if it was a mistake back in the ’90s to chuck out the Edmonds-Cariboo corridor.

Arguably, SkyTrain along Edmonds would have rendered the original Millennium Line unnecessary, freeing up money to build rapid transit sooner to Coquitlam, Richmond, and UBC. Maybe by now we’d be discussing adding a third route into downtown via Hastings Street.

I can see why South Burnaby residents objected to SkyTrain screeching through their neighbourhood. But for a fraction of the billion dollars that were eventually spent on the Millennium Line, the more offensive sections of the Edmonds route could have been concealed in tunnels.

However, as a resident of New Westminster for whom a Canada Way stop would come in rather handy, I admit I may be biased.

M.

Files referenced in this post:

1. SkyTrain Extension to Coquitlam

This is a memo dated Oct. 9, 1986, from Anthony L. Parr, Burnaby’s Director of Planning, to the Municipal Manager. It consists of Parr’s summary of the results of a BC Transit study of possible SkyTrain routes to Coquitlam, followed by the following documents:

• BC Transit press release from Oct. 2, 1986: “Transit Study Shows Two Possible SkyTrain Routes to Coquitlam”
• BC Transit report from Sept. 25, 1986: SkyTrain Extension to Coquitlam: Transit Planning Study Summary Report

2. SkyTrain Coquitlam Extension

A 4-page pamphlet published by BC Transit, dated Spring, 1991, discussing an ongoing study to select the optimal route for extending SkyTrain to Lougeed Mall and Coquitlam.

3. SkyTrain route debate

Four SkyTrain-related stories by reporter Dan Hilborn, describing fallout from the Edmonds-Cariboo route controversy, appearing on page 3 of the Burnaby Now newspaper, May 1, 1991.

Other sources:

4. “Transit Link”, Burnaby Now, August 1, 1990.
5. “SkyTrain official steps down over leaked project memo”, Vancouver Sun, April 26, 1991.
6. “Memo cites Edmonds as SkyTrain route”, Burnaby Now, April 24, 1991.
7. “Edmonds financial estimates queried”, Burnaby Now, May 1, 1991.
8. “Leaked memo causes furor”, Burnaby Now, April 28, 1991.
9. “SkyTrain routes debated”, Burnaby Now, May 12, 1991.
10. “Review causes delay”, Burnaby Now, May 12, 1991.
11. “SkyTrain delayed”, Burnaby Now, January 15, 1992.
12. “Fears laid to rest”, Burnaby Now, November 25, 1992.
13. “Clark hot on transit”, Burnaby Now, March 11, 1992.

 

Concrete octopus: Some unrealized Vancouver rapid transit plans.

Here’s a fun artifact from the online archives of the City of Vancouver: a discussion of the Greater Vancouver Area Rapid Transit Study that aired on local cable TV sometime in 1971. [1]

That study recommended a rapid transit system with four arms radiating outward from downtown – or as one of the interview subjects puts it,

Essentially, they’re suggesting that a concrete octopus be superimposed on the City of Vancouver, with the head being located at Georgia and Granville, and the tentacles radiating out from there.

Dr. Julius Kane displays the dreaded concrete octopus.

The speaker, Dr. Julius Kane [2] of UBC’s Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, complains that the proposed system of “spokes leading to a central hub” would make the rest of the region “subservient” to the downtown core – a design he dismisses as “Victorian”. He goes on in increasingly apocalyptic terms:

It’s really hard to see why the planners want to repeat all the mistakes of Chicago, New York, and all other centres of this type, when they could draw upon the experiences of the decay that have been taking place in so many urban regions. … They’re going to contribute towards ultimate decay and the ultimate ruin of everything that makes Vancouver a pleasant or a desirable place to live.

Few urbanists today would think to blame rapid transit, of all things, for the decay that afflicted big U.S. cities in the early 1970s. The slur “concrete octopus” was usually used by citizens opposed to freeway projects, like the one that Vancouver (uniquely among big North American cities) had recently kiboshed.

However, Dr. Kane’s jeremiad anticipates complaints still being made about Vancouver’s SkyTrain system a half century later – that, just like the freeways it was meant to render unnecessary, it’s an ugly, overpriced monstrosity that chokes the life out of every neighbourhood unlucky enough to be embraced in its ever-extending tentacles.

Dr. Kane outlines instead a plan for tripling existing bus service, with modest infrastructure investments (bus-only lanes, overpasses, and tunnels) to make that service more efficient. In essence, he’s describing something like the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) system I’ve plumped for more than once on these pages.

More radically, he proposes doing away with fares, not only to help out poor folks but to make trips faster for everyone by permitting quick all-door boarding. (BRT presumes stations with faregates for the same purpose.) He figures this could all be paid for out of the dividends from investing the $300-400 million intended for a light rail system into treasury bills instead.

What I find interesting about the “concrete octopus” decried by Dr. Kane is how intuitive a design it is, compared to the one that was eventually settled on. The planners behind that 1970 study simply replicated Vancouver’s existing road network, running rapid transit lines on or near the four provincial highways entering the downtown core:

• South via the Arbutus rail corridor, parallel to Granville Street / Highway 99
• Southeast via the old interurban line, parallel to Kingsway / Highway 1A
• East along Hastings Street / Highway 7A [3]
• North on a new Burrard Inlet crossing parallel to the Lion’s Gate Bridge / Highway 99

I recently spent some off-hours at the downtown library, looking at (and taking low-quality iPhone pictures of) the variety of rapid transit schemes proposed for Vancouver from the 1950s through the 1990s. I was curious to learn when, exactly, the two missing arms of the octopus – the Hastings arm and the North Shore arm – had been lopped off.

***

Prior to the late 1960s, it was assumed that any rapid transit network would be integrated into the freeway system planners were then keen to impose on the city. Here’s a lovely image from the 1958-59 Study on Highway Planning depicting the mid-century ideal of transportation efficiency. We’re looking east toward Burnaby Mountain, with downtown on the left:

“A portion of the recommended freeway network.”
Source: A Study on Highway Planning, Pt. II: Freeways With Rapid Transit, Technical Committee For Metropolitan Highway Planning, 1958-59.

The authors of that report proposed an express bus network running on or alongside the freeway, perhaps dipping into a tunnel underneath the city centre. Here, a designated bus lane zooms transit riders above freeway traffic:

Gazing ahead to the far-off year 1976, the authors projected the busiest route in their freeway bus network to be the one due east of downtown – along Hastings Street.

A few years later, the BC Research Council contemplated a light rail line running down the median of the freeway which it was assumed would soon be built to connect downtown with Highway 1. The alignment of that freeway (which would have flattened thirty or so linear blocks of Vancouver’s east side) would have been between Adanac and Venables Streets – about four blocks south of Hastings.

Source: Rail Rapid Transit For Metropolitan Vancouver, BC Research Council, 1962. (Discussed here.)

By the late 1960s, planners had grokked that while it might be cost-efficient to slap a rapid transit line down the middle of a newly-built freeway, since hardly anyone lived by the freeway, ridership would always be limited.

A 1968 study reverted to locating rapid transit along routes where people actually lived and worked: east along Hastings and south towards Richmond, with “possible future transit corridors” stretching north, southeast, and – a new wrinkle – along West Broadway toward UBC.

Source: An Appraisal for the City of Vancouver of Transportation Systems and Routes Connecting Brockton Point Crossing to Provincial highways 401 and 499, N.D. Lea and Associates, 1968. [4]

The 1970 “concrete octopus” report reshuffled the priorities. Of the four routes recommended by the authors, the Kingsway and Arbutus lines were deemed the best value. A Hastings Street line, while it would attract the second-highest ridership at then-current levels of demand, was deemed to have only “poor to good” potential for future growth.

Present potential passenger loads, AM peak hour inbound.
Source: Report on the Greater Vancouver Area Rapid Transit Study, Deleuw Cather & Company, 1970.

The North Shore route – which was to be integrated into a premised third Burrard Inlet crossing near Brockton Point – had an even weaker growth forecast. Its main selling point was that without it a fourth crossing would soon become necessary. (A half century later, we’re scraping by – barely – with two.)

After the various Brockton Point bridge and tunnel plans petered away in the early seventies, a fixed transit link across Burrard Inlet was never again seriously considered. The SeaBus ferry was instead introduced in 1977 to connect downtown with the North Shore.

***

As the seventies arrived, megalomaniacal neighbourhood-razing schemes were falling out of vogue. Notice that this map from a 1972 study still has its rapid transit lines terminating at “Project 200” – a massive waterfront redevelopment proposal then in its death throes.

Source: A Preliminary Study of Light Rapid Transit in Vancouver, GVRD, 1972.

Apart from that detail, it’s a fairly modest, mostly surface-level LRT proposal with two branches, one parallel to Kingsway on an alignment very close to our Expo Line, the other to Richmond via the Arbutus corridor.

A couple years later, the Richmond route was bounced temporarily out of the picture, as the Greater Vancouver Regional District began to concentrate on using rapid transit to juice the growth of Regional Town Centres in the suburbs to the east. Here we can see the shape of today’s SkyTrain starting to emerge…

Source: The Livable Region 1976/1986, GVRD, 1975.

The GVRD’s 1978’s Rapid Transit Project expanded the menu again. It didn’t look at West Broadway or the North Shore, but it did evaluate a route through central Burnaby – similar to our Millennium Line – which it tossed out as low value. Hastings Street was again examined and rejected: the route as far as Boundary Road would be heavily used, but beyond that the number of potential riders fell off dramatically.

Potential rapid transit ridership – peak loads in the mid-1980s.
Source: The Rapid Transit Project Report, GVRD, 1979.

Although passenger volumes between New Westminster and Coquitlam were even more minuscule, Coquitlam’s designation as a Regional Town Centre made this route the third priority, after the Kingsway and Richmond lines.

Soon work began on the original SkyTrain – what we now call the Expo Line – which on its opening in 1985 reached as far as New Westminster. Over the next few years it was extended across the Fraser River to Surrey, connecting downtown with three of the four Regional Town Centres identified in the 1970s as priority transit destinations.

In the late 1980s, as the Expo Line closed in on its southeastern terminus and planners and politicians squabbled about what should come next, the Vancouver Province published a map showing five routes then under consideration: four variations of the promised branch line to Coquitlam and – just to keep things interesting – an extension down Hastings to the PNE.

Source: Vancouver Province. (Colour highlights added.)
Update, May 19 2019: For more on the rejected Edmonds-Lougheed extension (orange on map) see “A SkyTrain Historical Footnote”.

This was something less than a serious plan but something more than the idle scribbling of a bored graphic artist. In a 1990 interview, BC Transit president Mike O’Connor discussed resuscitating not only the Hastings route but a dedicated Burrard Inlet crossing, and added a few brand-new far-fetched ideas:

BC Transit is studying SkyTrain extensions – including a tunnel under Burrard Inlet – that could revolutionize transportation in the Lower Mainland.

The studies are being spurred by SkyTrain’s spectacular passenger growth, BC Transit president Mike O’Connor told The Sunday Province.

The only way to avoid an impossibly clogged service is to build new lines, he said.

“We have to be very careful that we don’t overload that first rapid-transit line.”

Without further extensions, he said, the system will reach capacity within 10 years – and put the big squeeze on commuters.

O’Connor said BC Transit is investigating:

• A new SkyTrain line to the Pacific National Exhibition from downtown Vancouver, along either the waterfront or Hastings Street.
• A new line from the PNE to Coquitlam Centre, either along Burrard Inlet or south of Burnaby Mountain.
• A North Shore SkyTrain system and tunnel under Burrard Inlet to Vancouver.
• A north-south SkyTrain line – or fast-bus route – along Boundary Road from the PNE to the north arm of the Fraser River.

BC Transit estimates the cost of new lines and equipment at $40 million per kilometre. [5]

The defeat of BC’s scandal-plagued Social Credit government in 1991 put a stop to such speculations. The newly-elected NDP had, while in opposition, hammered SkyTrain as a Socred vanity project. Their intention was to swap elephantine transit megaprojects for quick and gritty pack-mule solutions, such as negotiating with railways to run limited-service commuter trains. These efforts led a few years later to the introduction of the West Coast Express, operating ten trains a day on CPR tracks between Mission and downtown Vancouver, and technically sort-of fulfilling the outgoing government’s promise of rapid transit to Coquitlam by 1995.

That same year, the provincial government announced their plan for an all-new, modestly-priced, street-level light rail line connecting Vancouver to Coquitlam via the Broadway-Lougheed corridor.

Source: “Review of Rapid Transit Project Claims”, Alan Greer, 1999.

The tortuous evolution of this line, which was eventually built with SkyTrain technology and truncated to a scenic tour of the shopping malls of central Burnaby, has been ably related by Daryl de la Cruz, so I’ll let him carry on the history lesson.

***

Richmond was added to the network with the opening of the Canada Line in 2009. Coquitlam had to wait for the extension of the Millennium Line in 2016. If current plans hold, by the mid-2020s SkyTrain will run along West Broadway as far as Arbutus Street and down Fraser Highway to some yet-to-be-determined point in the direction of Langley.

And beyond that? With recent grumblings from North Shore politicians about their traffic woes and overburdened bridges, might the northern arm of the concrete octopus someday sprout anew?

M.

1. This video was produced by the Simon Fraser Video Workshop, an extracurricular club at Simon Fraser University in the early 1970s.

2. Dr. Kane – who, it should be mentioned, was no more an expert on transportation than I am – is best known for having a species of toenail fungus named after him, and for being fired by UBC in 1983 for “improper use of the university computer and for using a research grant for private purpose”.

3. The Highway 1A and 7A designations for Kingsway and Hastings Street, respectively, have been officially retired from use, which came as news to me – they’re still prominently shown on Google Maps.

4. While most of the blurry photos on this page were taken from the original documents, I found this map of the 1968 freeway and rapid transit plan in Derek Hayes’ Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley.

5. “Transit System Plans On Track”, Vancouver Province, March 11, 1990.

And now, a word in favour of high-rise living.

Last week I wrote sympathetically about suburbanites attached to their low-density lifestyle who were being forced out of Vancouver by soaring housing costs. And a few months back I told the story of my friend who had to move when her low-rise apartment building was torn down to make room for a high-rise.

There was a long article on high-rise living in this weekend’s Vancouver Sun. Reporter Douglas Todd asked folks living in the shiny new-built towers of Vancouver and Burnaby whether they’re happy in their pricey homes in the sky.

Most are. A few mention that they’ve had trouble getting to know their neighbours. (Todd points out that in some buildings as many as 20% of the suites are empty, being owned by out-of-town investors.) One guy complains that his lobby is overrun with strangers staying in suites the owners have turned into Airbnb rentals.

Unsurprisingly, the people Todd interviews at ground level are less keen on living in the shadow of the towers. One fellow observes:

“I never see people walking here, or kids playing. All I ever see is cars coming out of the underground parking lots, which is kind of weird.”

That is weird. Todd identifies the intersection in Burnaby where this conversation took place. There’s a park and rec centre across the street; the SkyTrain is a few blocks away; grocery stores, a movie theatre, countless restaurants, and the province’s largest shopping mall are all in strolling distance. If these residents of one of the region’s most walkable neighbourhoods still feel the need to drive everywhere, maybe they chose the wrong neighbourhood to live in.

I speak as a resident of an ageing 14-story tower in a busy suburban neighbourhood. To my mind, the only real downside is the non-stop traffic noise. On the upside, I’m fewer than 500 steps from a grocery store that I pop into nearly every day; across the street from a beautiful park; a two-minute walk from four major bus routes. Coffeeshops, library, a good used bookstore – all are within a few blocks.

Before moving to Vancouver I lived in a rented house in Saskatoon. There was a convenience store a few blocks away. For every other amenity, I had to hop in my car. It was a pain in the neck, and I left the house far less frequently than I do now.

True, I got to know one of my neighbours. I didn’t like him much.

Todd mentions a meta-study by UVic psychologist Robert Gifford that claims to find higher rates of depression and mental illness among high-rise dwellers. Gifford admits that

many older studies were skewed because they focused on low-income high-rises in the US and Britain.

In other words, the populations being studied, poor and no doubt rife with petty crime and family dysfunction, may have been susceptible to depression and mental illness to begin with.

It makes me wonder whether more recent studies that claim to perceive malaise among high-rise dwellers are sufficiently adjusting for personality differences that cause people like me to choose such a life in the first place. Take this survey mentioned by local author and urban theorist Charles Montgomery:

[H]e talked about a Vancouver Foundation survey finding that residents of towers were “half as likely to have done a favour for a neighbour” and more likely to report having trouble making friends. “People living in towers consistently reported feeling more lonely and less connected than people living in detached homes.”

Okay, but without conducting a survey I can predict that high-rise dwellers are likelier than detached-home dwellers to be elderly, to live alone, to be recent immigrants – in other words, to face obstacles to human connection quite apart from their living situation.

Does the high-rise lifestyle actually contribute to this loss of connection? Or might it in some ways compensate for it?

Look at me. I’ve always been prone to depression. I grew up in a series of suburban houses where my depressing chores included mowing the lawn in summer, raking leaves in fall, and shovelling the driveway in winter. Being a grumbly cuss, I kept my eyes down while performing these chores, and never got friendly with the neighbours. I’m still a grumbly cuss, and guess what? – I’m single and childless. Which gives me the freedom to live in a high-rise where I can avoid both unpleasant yard maintenance and annoying small-talk with my neighbours.

Am I less happy than my married friends, with their kids and suburban houses? No doubt. But giving me chatty neighbours and a lawn to maintain won’t close the gap. As I see it, apartment living reduces my stress level and keeps me from becoming still more miserable.

My lifestyle isn’t for everyone. I wouldn’t deny any kid the opportunity to grow up in a house with a yard – though being across the street from a good neighbourhood park, with basketball courts, splash pool, and trees to climb, strikes me as a decent tradeoff. The thing is, stacking old folks, childless couples, and singletons like me in high-rises leaves more room for those detached single-family houses with fenced yards for kids to play in. It leaves more room for parks like the one I can see from my balcony, with its chattering squirrels and hundred-year-old chestnut trees. It leaves more room for outposts of untamed nature like Stanley Park, or Burnaby’s Central Park, big enough to conceal raccoons and porcupines and coyotes and even the occasional deer.

Plus, high-rise clusters supply the population density that makes better transit economically viable, so that people like me who still rely on our cars to visit friends in far-flung areas can someday forego car ownership altogether, and get around in buses or trains. And maybe with fewer cars zooming up and down the road, parents will be less leery about letting their kids run over unsupervised to the neighbourhood park to climb trees and chase squirrels.

So by all means, let’s do what we can to make high-rise architecture less oppressive to people living near the ground. And let’s do what we can to foster connections among alienated apartment-dwellers – at least the ones who actually want to become more connected.

But I fear that groundhuggers who enjoy their three bedrooms, vegetable gardens, and gossiping over the backyard fence, will mistakenly assume that those things are psychological necessities, and block the development of high-rises for our own good. The astronomical rents in high-rise neighbourhoods prove that there’s more demand for my lifestyle than the current supply of units can accommodate; and remember, every isolated weirdo who snags a place in a tower makes a bit more room for you well-adjusted groundhuggers to spread out in the ’burbs.

That won’t be enough on its own to make room for every groundhugger family that wishes to stay in Vancouver – not even close. But it’s a start.

M.