Broadway Subway stations begin to take shape for 2027 opening | Daily Hive

Platform level of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line's Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Construction on the Broadway Subway project is now entering its most advanced stages, with the multi-level underground station structures beginning to take shape along the corridor.

In less than two and a half years, the eastern terminus of the 99 B-Line express bus will shift to the new Arbutus Station, marking a major change in how public transit riders travel through Vancouver’s Broadway corridor.

The curtailed segment of the 99 B-Line will be replaced by the Millennium Line’s 5.7-km-long westward extension from VCC–Clark Station to Arbutus Station, offering a seamless SkyTrain connection with three times the capacity of the existing express bus — initially accommodating up to 7,000 passengers per hour per direction.

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This project includes six underground stations, 5 km of twin bored tunnels, and 700 metres of elevated guideway.

Today, Daily Hive Urbanized attended the provincial government’s media tour of the Broadway Subway construction site, showcasing the elevated-to-underground transition — technically called the “transition box” — near the Emily Carr University of Art & Design campus, as well as providing a closer look at the progress of the nearby Great Northern Way–Emily Carr Station, located just west of the tunnel entrance.

broadway subway construction tour june 2 2025

Elevated/underground transition box; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Elevated/underground transition box; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Track work installation is now occurring along most segments of the extension, with Expo/Millennium lines’ system tracks featuring two steel running rails, a side power rail (third rail), and an aluminum induction strip for the linear induction motor propulsion systems of the trains.

For the installation of the running rails, a specialized machine is used to pull 400-metre-long segments of rail into the tunnel. When in place, these segments are welded together to form one continuous rail.

Prior to this step, holes are drilled into the concrete flooring to put in fastening plates.

Westbound bored tunnel just west of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

As for the station construction progress to date, multi-level structural work is well underway, with crews now building up to the roof level — just beneath the ground surface and roadways.

For example, at Great Northern Way–Emily Carr Station, construction has advanced significantly since the tunnel boring phase was fully completed in April 2024.

The station’s excavation site previously served the dual purpose of a staging and operations hub for the tunnel boring machines. With the equipment now removed, construction across the entire project has accelerated without obstruction.

In late May 2025, construction crews completed the final section of the station’s roof at Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, marking a key milestone in the Broadway Subway Project. As part of the concrete pour, a maple leaf and a special edition Loonie — featuring trailblazing Canadian engineer Elsie MacGill — were embedded into the roof structure as a tribute.

Elsie (Elizabeth) MacGill was the world’s first female aeronautical engineer and professional aircraft designer. Her pioneering contributions to aviation include innovations such as de-icing systems and skis that enabled the first successful winterization of high-speed aircraft. The eastbound tunnel boring machine was also named in her honour.

loonie elsie maple leaf great northern way emily carr station may 28 2025

Special edition “Elsie” Loonie coin and a maple leaf imprinted into the roof of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station on May 28, 2025. (Government of BC)

Roof of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Entrance into Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Down below, the two underground levels of the station are now taking shape, including the 80-metre platforms, ventilation mechanical room/shaft, areas designated for vertical circulation such as staircases, escalators, and elevators, as well as the concourse/mezzanine level.

Construction has also begun on the street-level entrance building. Above the underground structure, crews are currently working to complete the roof slab before it is backfilled and concealed beneath the surface.

Further down the line at South Granville Station, construction has even progressed to the installation of the mechanical equipment for some of the escalators.

Concourse/mezzanine level of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Platform level of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

In 2026, construction will reach the milestones of the removal of the temporary traffic decks at the five station sites along Broadway, work will begin on fully fitting out the station interiors, and dynamic testing of the train system will begin.

“I think this has been a remarkable project,” said Mike Farnworth, the B.C. minister of transportation and transit, during the media tour deep underground today.

“We’ve got incredibly dedicated men and women working on it. There’s been a lot of design work done and the SkyTrain system itself is something that is technology that we’re very familiar with and the construction that goes along with that.”

In late 2024, the provincial government noted that this project will see a relatively slight cost increase of 4.5 per cent of $127 million — growing from $2.827 billion to $2.954 billion.

If all goes as planned, this extension of the Millennium Line reaching Arbutus will open in Fall 2027. Major construction work on the project first began in May 2021.

Platform level of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station; construction progress on SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, as of June 2, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

On a seamless one-train ride on the Millennium Line, travel times from Arbutus Station will be about six minutes to Broadway-City Hall Station (interchange to the Canada Line), 11 minutes to VCC-Clark Station, 12 minutes to Commercial-Broadway Station, and 47 minutes to Lafarge-Lake Douglas Station in Coquitlam.

The extension is expected to see an average ridership of well over 100,000 boardings per day upon opening, which will be driven by not only vastly reduced travel times and the “network effect” of the SkyTrain expansion and the new connectivity to the Canada Line at Broadway-City Hall, but also the increased densification along the corridor.

At Arbutus Station, an off-street bus exchange will also be built for the 99 B-Line’s truncated route to the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus.

Descending into Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station from the future street entrance.https://t.co/OalocPImHs pic.twitter.com/QKIAurgoi9

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) June 2, 2025

Descending from the concourse level to the platform level of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Stationhttps://t.co/OalocPImHs pic.twitter.com/mRNi64PA5R

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) June 2, 2025

Walking along the future westbound platform tracks at Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station.https://t.co/OalocPImHs pic.twitter.com/aSpVApMzpD

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) June 2, 2025

The transition between the subway and elevated guideway next to Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station.https://t.co/OalocPImHs pic.twitter.com/6Ijr6nEnRC

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) June 2, 2025

When asked by media about the Millennium Line’s further westward extension from Arbutus Station to UBC, Farnworth referenced TransLink’s Mayors’ Council’s 10-year plan through 2035, noting that the UBC extension is something being explored for the second half of that plan in the first half of the 2030s.

It is also known that the provincial government is currently leading the business case work for the UBC SkyTrain extension, which involves detailed technical design and planning work at a total cost of about $40 million, including $14 million from the federal government. In 2024, a contractor for the provincial government completed borehole drilling at 100-metre intervals between Arbutus and UBC to extract soil samples for geotechnical analysis.

Construction is also progressing quickly on the 16-km-long Surrey-Langley extension of SkyTrain’s Expo Line. The 100 per cent elevated extension between King George Station and Langley City Centre will provide eight elevated stations along the route. Major construction work first began in November 2024, with many new columns and pillars now highly apparent along the future SkyTrain route following Fraser Highway.

In Summer 2025, four gantry launchers will be working to assemble the concrete elevated guideway of the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project, which is expected to reach completion and open in late 2029.

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