Tunnel boring for Broadway Subway reaches Oak-VGH Station

Broadway Subway tunnel boring machine Phyllis breaking through Oak-VGH Station on October 12, 2023. (Government of BC)

One of the two tunnel boring machines for SkyTrain’s Millennium Line Broadway Extension has passed the halfway point in its journey under Vancouver.

In a bulletin, the provincial government announced the machine, named Phyllis, broke through the pit wall at Laurel Street on Thursday to reach the future site of Oak-VGH Station.

This represents an excavation of over 2 km of the westbound subway tunnel and the installation of about 1,330 concrete tunnel liner rings to date since departing the pit of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station in late November 2022.

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Phyllis’ last station breakthrough was Broadway-City Hall Station in late May 2023, and she restarted her journey westward towards Oak-VGH Station in early August 2023, effectively overtaking the other tunnel boring machine named Elsie, which was initially the lead machine after starting her big dig a month earlier in early October 2022.

Elsie is responsible for building the eastbound subway tunnel. She first arrived at Broadway-City Hall Station in mid-April 2023 and resumed her journey in early September 2023. She is now expected to arrive at Oak-VGH Station later this fall.

Phyllis will resume her journey from Oak-VGH Station to South Granville Station after undergoing scheduled maintenance, according to the bulletin.

Video of Phyllis breaking through at Oak-VGH Station on October 12, 2023:

oak vgh station broadway subway summer 2023

Construction progress at the pit of Oak-VGH Station in Summer 2023. (Government of BC)

Both machines are responsible for building the tunnel segment of the project between Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station, except for the subway station volumes along Broadway totalling a combined pit length of about seven city blocks, where the machines are slowly moved to the other end of the station pit upon breaking through the east wall.

While some station structural work can advance during the tunnel boring process, unimpeded construction work at each station towards full completion can only begin after tunnel boring is fully finished reaching Arbutus Station’s east wall at Cypress Street.

Advanced progress has also been seen on the 700-metre-long elevated guideway between the existing VCC-Clark Station and the tunnel entrance just east of the future site of Great Northern Way-Emily Carr Station. In total, the 5.7 km long extension of the Millennium Line will add six subway stations to the SkyTrain network.

oak vgh station skytrain broadway extension

SkyTrain Oak-VGH Station entrance building design concept, April 2021. (Government of BC)

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

As of November 2022, the provincial government indicated the completion and opening of the project had been shifted slightly from late 2025 to early 2026 due to the earlier impacts of the region’s concrete plant workers strike in Summer 2022.

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 early 2030s.

broadway subway skytrain millennium line station map names

September 2020 updated map with the final station names of the Millennium Line Broadway Extension. (Government of BC)

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