Broadway Subway opening further delayed until Fall 2027

Expect a longer period of short-term pain for the long-term gain of the Broadway Subway.

Today, officials with the Government of British Columbia have confirmed that SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension reaching Arbutus in Vancouver will now open in Fall 2027 instead of early 2026.

As well, the new replacement Pattullo Bridge between New Westminster and Surrey is now slated to open in Fall 2025 instead of by the end of 2024.

When major construction work on the SkyTrain extension began in Spring 2021, it was anticipated that the new subway would be ready for its first passengers by late 2025, based on the assumption that tunnel boring would reach completion by late 2023.

Following a strike of local concrete plant workers, which delayed the start of tunnel boring from Summer 2022 to Fall 2022, the subway’s scheduled opening was slightly shifted from late 2025 to early 2026. At the time, tunnel boring was still expected to be finished by the end of 2023.

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The newly updated timeline for completing and opening the subway comes just a month after the project achieved the pivotal milestone in late April of reaching completion on the entire 5 km long twin tunnel boring process between Great Northern Way-Emily Carr and Arbutus stations.

The new timeline of a Fall 2027 opening for the subway in Vancouver would mean back-to-back SkyTrain extension openings in 2027/2028, based on the current timeline of SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley Extension beginning major construction work later in 2024 and opening in late 2028.

In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized, Broadway Subway executive project director Lisa Gow for the provincial government confirmed that the delays to tunnel boring added roughly half a year to the construction timeline.

“So both [tunnel boring machines] Elsie and Phyllis have safely arrived at Arbutus, which we’re really excited about,” said Gow.

Tunnel boring machine Phyllis making her final breakthrough in a pressurized chamber at the Cypress Street wall of Arbutus Station on March 20, 2024. (Government of BC)

Tunnel boring machine Elsie making her final breakthrough in a pressurized chamber at the Cypress Street wall of Arbutus Station on April 26, 2024. (Government of BC)

Tunnel boring machine removal process and construction on Arbutus Station at Cypress Street, as of April 18, 2024. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Currently, crews are removing the tunnel boring machine components at the Cypress Street end of the Arbutus Station pit, and dismantling equipment within the twin tunnels and at the Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station site that supported tunnel boring, including the long conveyance system that brought out bored rock and soil.

Construction on other major components of the project, including the underground station structures and railway, could not continue uninhibited towards the state of full completion until tunnel boring had finished.

“Each of the stations behind the tunnel boring machines are now going to be clear, and so we can really have more room to be able to do more active work on the actual stations themselves. We were pretty limited before with the multi-service vehicles running through the tunnels and with the ventilation systems,” Gow told Daily Hive Urbanized.

“So, if you have one of the activities that takes longer than anticipated, like the tunnel boring, then it has a knock-on effect on other things.”

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Broadway-City Hall Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

February 2024 construction progress: A mined tunnel at Broadway-City Hall Station to create the underground footpaths enabling passengers to transfer directly between the platforms of the Millennium Line and Canada Line. (Government of BC)

In late Spring and early Summer 2023, tunnel boring machine movements took a months-long pause at the pit of Broadway-City Hall Station — far longer than any of the other pauses taken at the other stations.

Gow told Daily Hive Urbanized that the tunnel boring delays in the area of Broadway-City Hall Station were due in part to the longer-than-anticipated process of excavating the two-block-long station pit. In order to shift the tunnel boring machines from the Alberta Street end of the pit to the Cambie Street end of the pit, crews not only had to complete excavation to the base level but also finish the solid concrete foundation to provide the flooring needed to slide the machines.

After they were able to pull the machines to the Cambie Street side to resume the tunnel boring process, crews took more time than originally contemplated to dive under the Canada Line tunnel, combined utilities, and trunk sewer under Cambie Street. The Broadway Subway’s tunnel depth of over 20 metres at Broadway-City Hall Station is the project’s deepest to provide the necessary clearance.

“A lot of care was taken to do that smoothly, carefully, and making sure that we monitor to make sure there was no impacts,” she said.

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Arbutus Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Generally, Gow says, the tunnel boring process did not encounter any major unexpected soil condition issues — very much unlike the tunnel boring process for the Millennium Line’s Evergreen Extension a decade ago, which also saw extensive delays due to extremely poor soil conditions, contributing to a handful of sinkholes. Tunnel boring delays pushed the Evergreen Extension’s opening from Summer 2016 to December of that year.

Prior geotechnical testing work informed the project team of some variable soil conditions between South Granville and Arbutus stations, where the ground is softer and where machines ran into some cobbles. For this reason, she says, for this final tunnel boring segment between two stations, the machines also went fairly slow through the section to avoid encountering any issues.

Another major contributor to the delays was the installation of the four-lane vehicle decks on Broadway to maintain the arterial route for vehicles. Five of the project’s six subway stations — each spanning one or two blocks long under Broadway — saw deck installation as one of the first major steps of the construction process, which enables crews to perform cut-and-cover excavation work below vehicle traffic.

Depending on the station location, deck installation at the five locations added between four and nine months to the construction timeline.

For instance, she says, it took particularly longer to install the decks at Arbutus Station, which is another two-block-long station that entails the station itself and a major crossover track enabling the trains to reverse direction from the terminus. Crews were “very careful” due to the proximity of residential buildings directly adjacent to the station pit.

Overall, says Gow, “it was quite complex because we’re directly adjacent to many of the businesses, so we wanted to do that, obviously, safely and carefully.”

Gow notes that the process for dismantling the decks could begin as early as late 2025, but she warns that it could take as long as putting them in place. After the decks are removed, the permanent utilities will return, and the street will be rebuilt.

However, this also means businesses impacted by surface construction along the route will see a longer period of disruptions.

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s tunnel portal next to Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

The decision to use a combined tunnel boring process and localized station-only cut-and-cover process for building the extension was influenced very early on by the desire to avoid the same degree of disruptions that were experienced on Cambie Street for the Canada Line’s extensive cut-and-cover tunnel construction process in the 2000s.

While the project’s 5 km long tunnelled segment has been extensively delayed, good progress has been made for the easternmost 0.7 km long elevated segment between the existing VCC-Clark Station and the tunnel portal just before Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. The elevated guideway’s concrete structure is complete, and crews are preparing to lay the first tracks.

According to the provincial government, the project was also impacted early on by the pandemic, which slowed down the pace of organizing resources, equipment, materials, staff, and early works to relocate utilities and install traffic decks.

Gow told Daily Hive Urbanized she is confident that the new Fall 2027 opening timeline can be maintained, with “dynamic testing” — the movement of test trains onto the extension — beginning in 2026 and continuing through 2027.

However, with an elongated construction timeline, she acknowledges that both the contractor — the consortium led by Acciona and Ghella — and the provincial government are facing some cost pressures, although she could not elaborate on any precise cost estimates at this time. Acciona is also building the delayed Pattullo Bridge.

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s South Granville Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s South Granville Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s Broadway-City Hall Station as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

Under a design, build, and finance contract, the contractor’s budget is $1.73 billion of the total project cost of $2.83 billion. The remaining $1.1 billion comes from investments made by the provincial and municipal governments and TransLink towards aspects such as land acquisition for stations and other infrastructure, utilities relocation, previous preliminary detailed planning work, and the ongoing project office costs of monitoring the construction work.

Including the short elevated guideway segment, the entire Broadway Subway project will extend the Millennium Line’s route by 5.7 km.

On a one-train ride, the travel time from Arbutus Station to Commercial-Broadway Station will be about 12 minutes, and to Lafarge Lake-Douglas Station will be about 47 minutes. During peak hours, trains will run every three to four minutes.

When the extension opens, the existing 99 B-Line will run a truncated route between the bus exchange at Arbutus Station and the University of British Columbia until the future westward extension beyond Arbutus to reach the campus is completed — possibly in the 2030s.

The extension will also transform Broadway-City Hall Station into a major regional interchange hub between the Canada and Millennium Line.

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s elevated guideway as of May 2024. (Government of BC)

Construction progress on Broadway Subway’s elevated guideway as of April 2024. (Government of BC)

You might also like:
• New Pattullo Bridge opening pushed to Fall 2025
• Breakthrough! Tunnel boring for Broadway Subway reaches full completion
• Official names of the eight new stations of Surrey-Langley SkyTrain revealed
• 25 before and after comparisons: The future Surrey-Langley SkyTrain
• Opening of new SkyTrain Capstan Station further delayed to later in 2024