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.
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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]
[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]
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.
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.
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