Opinion: BC NDP showed SkyTrain extensions are good politics, and the Conservatives should think bigger

The BC NDP is leaving office with no shortage of controversial decisions and questionable judgment to answer for. But a fair assessment of its over nine years leading the Government of British Columbia should also recognize where it made a lasting, positive difference.

Public transit was one of the party’s strongest areas, with John Horgan and David Eby helping to keep services running while substantially expanding the infrastructure that supports them.

Under the BC NDP, TransLink, BC Transit, and BC Ferries received emergency operating funding to sustain service levels through the pandemic years and its lingering financial impacts afterwards.

Meanwhile, a more visible legacy is taking shape beneath Broadway in Vancouver and above Fraser Highway in Surrey and Langley: two major SkyTrain extensions with overlapping construction timelines.

The Millennium Line’s Broadway extension will add 5.7 km and six stations between the existing VCC-Clark Station and the future Arbutus Station. The Surrey-Langley extension will add another 16 km and eight stations to the Expo Line between the existing King George Station and the future Langley City Centre Station. Together, before the end of this decade, they will expand the SkyTrain network from just under 80 km to just over 101 km — an increase of roughly 22 km or about 27 per cent.

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• Opinion: Promising SkyTrain to Newton is easy, but building it right is harder
• TransLink stresses funding needs as provincial parties promise SkyTrain extension to Newton
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The Broadway extension is scheduled to open in late 2027, roughly a year from now, followed by the Surrey-Langley extension in late 2029.

These extensions will be an incredible game changer for how people move around Metro Vancouver.

The current Broadway Subway project should have gone all the way to UBC

The contrast with the Christy Clark’s BC Liberals-led provincial government’s handling of public transit expansion is difficult to forget.

Clark’s insistence on holding the 2015 plebiscite on starting a regional sales tax to support public transit turned TransLink’s expansion projects into a highly divisive political battle. It was an avoidable detour that left the region’s public transit expansion plan without a new funding source and delayed progress on urgently needed investments.

And those delays also meant far higher construction costs, particularly as inflation surged in the wake of the pandemic. Provincial leadership should have meant working out a viable funding arrangement and taking responsibility for it.

But the BC NDP’s public transit legacy has also been frustrating in its own ways at times. Yes, it pushed long-overdue projects into the construction stage, but it is now leaving office without having committed to the future stages of SkyTrain expansion that Metro Vancouver needs.

The clearest missed opportunity is the Millennium Line’s remaining segment between Arbutus Street and the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus.

Arbutus Station will be a highly useful public transit hub, and the Broadway extension will serve a major concentration of jobs and health services. But it leaves a crucial part of the corridor highly dependent on buses, as UBC-bound riders will still have to transfer to the truncated 99 B-Line route at Arbutus Station to finish their journey to campus.

Instead of stopping halfway at Arbutus Street, the BC NDP should have made extending the Millennium Line all the way to UBC in a single phase a firm provincial commitment — incorporating it into the current Broadway Subway project under construction. Building the full extension together from the outset when major construction first began in May 2021 would have delivered very significant economies of scale and reduced overall construction costs.

To be clear, the BC NDP did later commit to advancing the UBC SkyTrain extension as its own separate project. In 2022, the provincial government took over responsibility from TransLink for leading the project’s design, planning, and business case development. In May 2026, B.C. Minister of Transportation and Transit Mike Farnworth told the legislature that the provincial government had matched the federal government’s $14 million for business case work and contributed another $5 million.

But in that same exchange, Farnworth pointed to the UBC SkyTrain project’s placement in the first half of the 2030s, the later years of TransLink’s 10-year investment priorities through 2035 — a timetable he has repeatedly cited when asked about progress on this extension project. This shows the limitation of the BC NDP’s approach: it was willing to fund planning while allowing TransLink’s Mayors’ Council’s priorities to dictate the timeline of moving toward construction.

North Shore’s rapid transit solution needs the B.C. government’s strong leadership and guidance

The North Shore presents a similar missed opportunity to lead and define a vision for SkyTrain across Burrard Inlet. This would be a transformative piece of infrastructure, given the North Shore’s well-known accessibility and transportation challenges, including its highly congested north-south bridge crossings and east-west routes. The last fixed-link crossing of Burrard Inlet opened in 1960, when the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge was completed.

To put it quite bluntly, the North Shore needs a serious transportation solution after being ignored for so long. Half measures should not be acceptable.

Yes, it will be very expensive. After nearly seven decades without an additional fixed-link crossing and exponential population and economic growth, the North Shore warrants a future-proof investment that matches the scale of its transportation needs — today and 60 years from now. As one option, a new SkyTrain crossing could also be incorporated into a replacement of the aging Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, following the example of Montreal’s Samuel De Champlain Bridge, which carries both road traffic and the REM rapid transit line.

The existing two bridges spanning Burrard Inlet — both the Lions Gate Bridge and Ironworkers Memorial Bridge — are highly constrained and prone to unpredictable major delays. They serve not only the North Shore’s growing population, but also travellers heading to Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast via BC Ferries’ Horseshoe Bay terminal, and to Squamish and Whistler along the Sea to Sky Highway. These crossings also carry vehicle traffic bound for communities beyond Pemberton, making them important links between Metro Vancouver and the B.C. Interior. The other option is through the highways at the easternmost end of the Fraser Highway.

Building a high-capacity, fast, and reliable rail rapid transit alternative for the North Shore would give more local travellers a real and attractive alternative to driving, helping free up bridge capacity for trips that require a vehicle to reach destinations beyond the Metro Vancouver region.

The BC NDP-led provincial government completed a preliminary technical feasibility study of a SkyTrain extension project to the North Shore, with its findings released in 2020. That study identified five potential crossing options, but it was a very early step toward determining what could be built, rather than a commitment to deliver a project.

The provincial government should have established SkyTrain to the North Shore as a clear long-term objective, with milestones for selecting a route, completing a business case, and securing funding. The complexity of crossing Burrard Inlet and the substantial construction costs are reasons to begin detailed planning early, so the project can be as close to shovel-ready as possible when very significant construction funding and a financial model are secured.

Set a vision — the collective north star — then determine the steps to get there.

That vision could also accommodate phased construction. An initial phase, for example, could run between the Lonsdale Quay SeaBus terminal and bus exchange in North Vancouver City and the Expo Line’s Metrotown Station in Burnaby via Second Narrows, Hastings Street, and Willingdon Avenue. There would also be a key transfer station with the Millennium Line’s Brentwood Town Centre Station.

Establishing a practical first phase would give the region a concrete project to advance while preserving the broader vision for an east-west SkyTrain line across the North Shore. Subsequent phases would extend the line west from Lonsdale to ultimately reach Park Royal in West Vancouver.

Instead, TransLink’s Mayors’ Council is considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars — or possibly much more — on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) along the Metrotown-North Shore corridor. This is funding that would be better spent as a down payment on a SkyTrain extension.

Much more modest short- and medium-term improvements — far short of becoming the costly BRT standard — to existing RapidBus services could help address immediate needs while SkyTrain planning advances. Instead, BRT is being pushed as a costly and unnecessary intermediate step to eventual SkyTrain on some primary regional corridors — a concern that also applies to TransLink’s proposed $700-million King George Boulevard BRT line in Surrey, for example.

Underlying the decisions not to extend SkyTrain to UBC in a single phase as part of the current Broadway Subway project, not to commit to a Metrotown-North Shore SkyTrain vision, and to pursue BRT instead is a broader question about who sets the region’s transportation priorities.

Previous B.C. governments have shown the required public transit leadership

There is also a useful lesson in the earlier BC Liberals-led provincial government in the 2000s, under Gordon Campbell.

The Canada Line project faced fierce opposition from several of the regional mayors and city councillors who sat on TransLink’s earlier governing model of elected municipal officials sitting on the board of directors. Before finally approving it, TransLink’s then-board rejected moving the Canada Line project forward twice in 2004, partly because some of the board directors representing the Tri-Cities and Burnaby wanted to see rail rapid transit built first to reach Coquitlam City Centre while others were concerned about the cost, ridership potential, and/or were more supportive of improved buses or street-level LRT.

Campbell’s administration helped break the impasse between the municipal leaders, and committed to also supporting the other rail rapid transit project — what was known at the time as the Evergreen Line, a standalone street-level LRT project.

The provincial government at the time understood that an important regional rapid transit project could not remain trapped in those arguments indefinitely.

Years later, in 2008, the provincial government completed a business case analysis that strongly favoured pivoting the Evergreen Line LRT line — strongly supported by municipal leadership — back to the original provincial plan of a continuous eastward SkyTrain extension of the Millennium Line. That analysis identified a marginal increase in construction cost for a far faster end-to-end trip, lower annual operating costs, and substantially stronger projected ridership.

That pivot was made under Campbell’s administration, although ultimately proceeding with the Millennium Line Evergreen extension construction occurred directly under Christy Clark’s administration.

The lesson is that the provincial government has a very legitimate and significant role in resolving regional disagreements. And when it decides to take such a leading role that removes the variables of local politics, it is often much better positioned to choose infrastructure solutions that will best serve the Metro Vancouver region over the very long term, because it can take a more holistic, long-term view that extends beyond individual municipal boundaries.

The avoidable Surrey LRT detour with provincial leadership

The abandoned Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT project is another key example of why that provincial leadership matters. Had the provincial government challenged the project’s weak business case and limited transportation benefits much earlier, it could have spared the region years of planning and tens of millions of dollars in wasted spending.

They should have challenged the assumption that the City of Surrey’s preferred street-level LRT concept offered the strongest transportation benefits.

The warning signs were substantial.

Surrey’s municipal officials at the time were even highlighting how street-level LRT’s slower speed was an asset, arguing that it would keep more Surrey residents in Surrey instead of speeding them off to Vancouver as SkyTrain would.

That downright selfish approach grossly lacked a regional perspective — especially for a major investment funded by provincial and regional taxpayers — and prioritized economic development over good transportation design, rather than treating good transportation design as the foundation for economic development.

The project’s poor business case should have prompted much harder questions about whether LRT was the right investment, regardless of Surrey City Hall’s enthusiasm for the technology — up until the change of municipal leadership in late 2018, when Doug McCallum returned as Surrey’s mayor.

The analysis also raised questions about Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT’s ability to attract new public transit riders.

Even the projected end-to-end travel time was hardly transformative, given the major investment. TransLink projected a 27-minute LRT journey between Guildford Town Centre and the Newton bus exchange, just two minutes faster than the approximately 29-minute bus journey on the 96 B-Line at the time (now known as the R1 King George Boulevard RapidBus). Street-level trains would have to pass through key intersections, be highly susceptible to service disruptions due to the risk of collisions with vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists, and follow road speed limits.

Moreover, the LRT project was highly unpopular with public transit users and the general public, which greatly contributed to McCallum’s re-election in the October 2018 civic election.

The BC NDP inherited the LRT plan, but it also endorsed the project in September 2018, shortly before McCallum fulfilled his re-election promise and cancelled the project in favour of advancing a SkyTrain extension along the Fraser Highway corridor to reach Langley.

Strong provincial leadership and oversight should have meant challenging those weaknesses before the project reached such an advanced stage of planning. Municipal preferences deserve consideration, but they should never substitute for a convincing case that a particular technology and concept offers the best use of public money.

Provincial leadership means taking a much stronger role in deciding what gets built. Deferring too heavily to TransLink’s Mayors’ Council risks allowing municipal political rivalries, squabbling, and short-term electoral considerations to overshadow Metro Vancouver’s broader, long-term transportation needs.

The Mayors’ Council has an important role. Its members understand their communities and help determine regional plans and funding. But they also face civic elections and pressure to secure public transit investment within their own municipal boundaries — boundaries that, in practice, mean very little to commuters whose daily journeys cross several municipal jurisdictions in a very geographically compact, interconnected urban region.

BC NDP sided with the region’s mayors who wanted the original 10-lane George Massey Bridge project cancelled

The BC NDP’s misadventure in replacing the aging, congested George Massey Tunnel with its own version of a seismically safer, higher-capacity crossing also demonstrates the risks of placing too much weight on municipal political preferences.

In 2017, Horgan’s newly elected provincial government cancelled the bidding process for the previous BC Liberals-led administration’s proposed 10-lane bridge across the Fraser River between Richmond and Delta.

The project spearheaded by Christy Clark had attracted a reported fixed-price construction bid of $2.6 billion, compared with the provincial government’s overall budget of $3.5 billion. The broader project included extensive Highway 99 widening between Richmond and Delta, major new interchanges, and dedicated bus rapid transit infrastructure that could be converted into a SkyTrain extension’s right-of-way at a later date.

When the BC NDP halted the project, procurement was already well advanced, environmental approval had been secured, and site preparation had begun. Major construction was scheduled to start later in 2017, with the bridge opening in 2022.

In the lead-up to and during the 2017 provincial election campaign, the bridge faced significant opposition from regional mayors, particularly Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, while then-Delta Mayor Lois Jackson was a vocal supporter. The BC NDP’s complete deference to those municipal opponents helped shape its decision to abandon the bridge project.

After halting the project, Horgan’s government explicitly promised to work with Metro Vancouver mayors to ensure the replacement plan reflected their ideas and regional priorities. A task force comprised of select mayors subsequently recommended an eight-lane immersed-tube tunnel.

In 2021, the provincial government announced it would proceed with that approach, aligning with the immersed tunnel recommendation made by those mayors and the endorsement of Metro Vancouver Regional District’s board of directors.

The immersed tunnel was originally announced with an estimated budget of $4.15 billion and an opening in 2030. By July 2026, its budget had climbed to $8.5 billion, and its anticipated completion had slipped to September 2031 — nine years after the original bridge project’s scheduled opening.

Inflation, evolving project details and engineering complexities, and construction market pressures are important factors. But they do not erase the consequences of abandoning an advanced project and spending years pursuing a replacement.

The procurement turmoil also raises questions about whether the new $8.5-billion budget will hold. In June 2026, Eby’s government announced it was terminating its agreement with Cross Fraser Partnership, the European-led private consortium selected two years earlier, after failing to reach agreement on the commercial terms for final construction.

Eby’s administration then moved to restart the bidding process for the major construction work still to come. Design and early construction work and site preparation first began in January 2026, but the provincial government was once again seeking contractors to fulfill the project’s major construction activities.

Major construction had previously been expected to begin in 2026, subject to environmental approval and permits. The latest schedule now anticipates major construction starting in 2027, with the environmental assessment expected to conclude by the end of 2026.

That approval process has itself taken far longer than initially anticipated. When the review began in 2021, completion was expected in late 2024 or 2025. By Summer 2025, the target had shifted to Fall 2026. Two months now remain before the end of 2026; whether that revised timeline will be met remains to be seen.

Consulting local mayors is sensible. Treating their preferred solution as sufficient justification for what has become an enormously costly reset, with years of additional waiting for congestion relief, is another matter.

Refusing to reconsider that decision for the sake of saving face only compounds the problem.

The concern also extends to what taxpayers are getting for the money. The previous 10-lane bridge proposal included a much more extensive package of Highway 99 upgrades. The BC NDP’s replacement plan, with an exponentially higher construction cost, provides fewer lanes and much more modest highway corridor improvements, including a substantially smaller new Steveston Highway interchange than originally envisioned. Those downsized Highway 99 corridor upgrades were completed over the last few years, prior to the start of major construction work on the immersed tunnel.

Spending more can be justified when it delivers substantially greater capacity, features, and long-term benefits. But spending considerably more after years of delay, while also substantially scaling back major parts of the original concept, is much harder to defend.

The combined cost of the BC NDP’s decision to abandon the original bridge project — far higher construction costs, major economic losses from years of delay and having commuters wait longer in traffic, and missed economic opportunities — has been substantial.

The original bridge project was not perfect, but it would have at least delivered a crossing that is seismically resilient and offers greatly improved and safer vehicle traffic flow, and much sooner. And that is before considering the billions of dollars that could have been saved to support other major infrastructure projects — like more SkyTrain extensions.

B.C. Premier-elect Lorne Doerkson’s incoming Conservative majority government has promised to pivot back to the original 10-lane bridge concept to replace the George Massey Tunnel, as outlined in the party’s provincial election platform. On the surface, this appears to mirror the approach the BC NDP took in 2017 shortly after it formed government, but the Conservatives argue that based on what experts have told them, a bridge would carry a lower cost in the range of billions of dollars and be far less complex to build compared to an immersed tunnel.

SkyTrain is good politics, too

The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension currently under construction has also faced escalating costs — rising by 50 per cent from about $4 billion to $6 billion in Summer 2024, when the major construction contracts were finalized. This raised broader concerns about the provincial government’s ability to control infrastructure construction costs, following the pandemic’s disruption of global markets and the BC NDP’s specific unionized labour and procurement requirements.

Yet those SkyTrain project cost increases have attracted far less criticism because the vast majority of Metro Vancouver residents and the broader business community generally recognize the project’s value in its own right, see it as a much better investment than the previous Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT project, and, quite simply, love to see more SkyTrain.

SkyTrain is strongly preferred for its speed, frequency, and relatively high reliability — made possible by its full grade separation and automation.

Politically, that makes the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension a win as well. Its cost increases are easier to defend than those of the BC NDP’s George Massey Tunnel replacement plan, where taxpayers are being asked to pay substantially more and wait far longer for far less infrastructure.

Given the BC NDP’s strong support for public transit, it is all the harder to understand why the party was not more gung-ho about setting out a vision and beginning to plan further SkyTrain extensions along other major regional corridors and into underserved areas of Metro Vancouver. Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government seemed to show proportionally greater ambition for expanding rail rapid transit across Greater Toronto, while Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government is in the process of outlining a long-term strategy for rail rapid transit and interregional passenger rail services.

It is therefore unsurprising that B.C. premier-elect Lorne Doerkson and the Conservative Party of British Columbia decisively committed during the provincial election campaign to extending SkyTrain’s Expo Line along King George Boulevard to Newton. In contrast, Eby’s BC NDP had merely agreed to discuss the idea.

Although Doerkson’s commitment builds on a promise Surrey Mayor-elect McCallum had already made during his civic election campaign, it is a natural north-south branch extension of the Expo Line along one of Metro Vancouver’s primary arterial corridors, with Newton being a strategic growth area to connect to SkyTrain.

The BC NDP deserves much credit for advancing two long-delayed major SkyTrain extensions into construction. But the next provincial government has an opportunity to build on that record with a clearer vision for what comes next — and much stronger provincial leadership to get there.

Doerkson and his incoming Conservative majority government should take these lessons seriously and provide stronger provincial leadership on transportation infrastructure, rather than deferring too heavily to municipal governments and TransLink’s Mayors’ Council.

The provincial government’s major financial challenges will require difficult choices about spending and the timing of construction. But those constraints should not become an excuse to leave essential projects in preliminary planning indefinitely. Advancing designs, completing business cases, establishing funding arrangements, and identifying practical construction phases would give the province concrete projects to move forward as funding becomes available.

The UBC SkyTrain extension should be a clear priority, with a credible timeline and funding plan for completing the Millennium Line west of Arbutus Street. The business case for UBC SkyTrain should be finished sooner rather than later as the next step.

Doerkson should also follow through on his Newton SkyTrain extension commitment by directing detailed planning for an Expo Line extension along King George Boulevard.

For a new standalone Metrotown-North Shore SkyTrain line, the Conservatives should establish a provincial commitment and pursue a creative financial model to help deliver it — as a measure to reduce the level of upfront provincial funding required, which is the current challenge with major capital projects. That could be a carefully structured public-private partnership, similar to an improved model of the Canada Line or Montreal’s new SkyTrain-like REM network, which is privately owned, operated, and largely funded by institutional investor La Caisse.

Perhaps the separate network of the Metrotown-North Shore SkyTrain line could also eventually have a branch that runs along Hastings Street between Downtown Vancouver and the Capitol Hill neighbourhood in Burnaby.

Doerkson’s administration must also provide TransLink with a new, stable, long-term funding source that supports both expansion and existing services. That means accounting for the capital costs of new infrastructure as well as the increased operating costs of delivering frequent, reliable service across a larger SkyTrain network.

Making difficult decisions before everyone is comfortable with them is part of the job.

While SkyTrain is supposed to be driverless, provincial leadership on public transit is not.

You might also like:
• Where the BC NDP, Conservatives, and Greens stand on extending SkyTrain to UBC
• Lorne Doerkson's B.C. Conservatives promise 10-lane George Massey Bridge instead of $8.5-billion, eight-lane immersed tunnel
• Opinion: Promising SkyTrain to Newton is easy, but building it right is harder
• TransLink stresses funding needs as provincial parties promise SkyTrain extension to Newton
• BC NDP and Conservatives promise extending SkyTrain to Newton, aligning with Surrey mayor-elect Doug McCallum's plan
• North Shore-Metrotown SkyTrain would see 120,000 riders daily: study
• TransLink's R2 RapidBus ridership jumps 160% following North Shore to Metrotown route extension
• Former MLA Ravi Kahlon reflects on election, NDP leadership race, and B.C.'s future