Opinion: Why Hastings SkyTrain is critical for North Shore SkyTrain

Opinion: Why the Hastings SkyTrain and North Shore SkyTrain lines should be built together

BIRT SkyTrain interlined with a Hastings SkyTrain. (Lee Haber)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Lee Haber, who is an urban and transportation planner and the director of strategy and partnerships at Mountain Valley Express, a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring world-class regional rail to the South Coast of British Columbia.

Last year, Vancouver City Council decided to prioritize future rapid transit planning on the Hastings Street corridor ahead of the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridor.

While this may seem like semantics, given that both projects are many years away from happening, it actually makes a lot of sense for a reason they likely did not anticipate.

Though the Hastings Street corridor already has many major destinations, such as Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Hastings Park/PNE, it is served by some of TransLink’s busiest bus routes, and the corridor does see traffic congestion. It should also be noted that Hastings Park/PNE will grow as a regional entertainment destination through the completion of the new PNE amphitheatre venue and the PNE’s planned redevelopment and expansion of Playland into a theme park.

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However, this is not the main reason it should be the next SkyTrain route within Vancouver after SkyTrain Millennium Line’s extension to the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus.

Instead, there are several key technical reasons why SkyTrain along Hastings Street between downtown Vancouver and North Burnaby’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood should be prioritized and is the key to unlocking the next wave of SkyTrain network expansion in Metro Vancouver.

Much ado “aBIRT” nothing?

In recent years, much attention has been given to how SkyTrain or rapid transit should serve the North Shore.

Several studies have been conducted and support seems to be coalescing around Burrard Inlet Rapid Transit (BIRT), also commonly referred to as the “Purple Line” — the rapid transit route between Park Royal in West Vancouver and Metrotown in Burnaby via the Second Narrows, with major stops such as Lonsdale, Phibbs Exchange, Hastings Park/PNE, Brentwood Town Centre, and the BC Institute of Technology (BCIT) Burnaby campus.

All of this is for good reason: the North Shore has been waiting for SkyTrain for decades, and such a full grade-separated and automated rapid transit solution would likely generate high levels of ridership.

north shore connects burrard inlet rapid transit skytrain

Burrard Inlet Rapid Transit concepts of two North Shore SkyTrain lines via the Second Narrows: Gold Line from Park Royal to downtown Vancouver via Hastings, and Purple Line from Park Royal to Brentwood Town Centre Station and Metrotown Station via Willingdon Avenue. (North Shore Connects)

However, despite the strong case for the Purple Line, there is an enormous challenge to building it that goes beyond finding a corridor through Lonsdale or crossing the Second Narrows. Rail transit systems also require a large parcel of land (often over six hectares) somewhere adjacent to the line for an operations and maintenance centre (OMC), which entails a large train storage yard and maintenance facilities for both the train fleet and the many kilometres of rail.

SkyTrain’s existing OMCs entail the main original facility of OMC1 in the Edmonds area of Burnaby, which serves the Expo and Millennium lines, and the Bridgeport OMC in North Richmond, which separately serves the Canada Line. There is also a small OMC3 facility on the Millennium Line’s Evergreen extension just east of Inlet Centre Station.

Summer 2022 construction progress in Burnaby’s Edmonds area on the new SkyTrain control centre building at OMC2 (left) and upgrades on OMC1 (right) to handle the future Mark V cars. (TransLink)

Currently, TransLink is constructing a new major additional OMC near Braid Station at a cost of $383 million, and planning is underway on a future additional OMC within the North Cloverdale area next to SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension.

If one looks at the planned BIRT route from Park Royal to Metrotown, it becomes clear that there really isn’t any suitable site along the corridor for building such a facility. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would likely be prohibitively expensive.

Though the Purple Line alignment lacks suitable maintenance facility sites, this does not apply to the Hastings Street corridor. In fact, there is plenty of vacant land located on the Old Shellburn Site just north of Kensington Mall in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of North Burnaby that could accommodate such a facility.

hastings skytrain subway vancouver concept

A potential OMC Site at the Shellburn Distribution Terminal Site in relation to rapid transit along Hastings Street. (Lee Haber)

BIRT SkyTrain interlined with a Hastings SkyTrain. (Lee Haber)

Since a SkyTrain line along Hastings Street would easily interline with BIRT, such a maintenance facility could easily serve both lines. Such a move would save both projects at least hundreds of millions of dollars and accelerate their progress. It seems like if we want SkyTrain to the North Shore sooner, the best thing we can do is prioritize a subway along Hastings Streets between downtown Vancouver and Capitol Hill.

Reducing the cost by thinking regionally

Our goal shouldn’t be to just build BIRT, a Hastings Subway, or any specific project; our focus should be assembling an entire regional transit network with each project serving as a piece of that network.

Using transit should be a seamless experience with easy and convenient transfers between bus, SkyTrain, and regional rail (express trains that reach 160 km/hr). By designing and building with the network in mind, we can maximize ridership, save billions of dollars and build the kind of comprehensive transit network our rapidly growing region desperately needs.

An example of where these savings can be achieved lies in the western section of the Hastings Subway as it approaches downtown Vancouver. Even though a Hastings Subway would likely need to be tunnelled — and tunnelling is relatively expensive — this cost can be reduced by sharing part of this tunnel with future regional rail and high-speed rail services.

Since all of these services should connect to the Waterfront Station transit hub, it makes sense for the new access to accommodate all three forms of rail service, thereby distributing the cost and avoiding duplication.

And yes, the Shellburn OMC site could also accommodate regional rail trains.

This approach of sharing infrastructure between rapid transit and regional rail has been employed in cities such as Tokyo and resulted in better networks at lower costs.

Shared tunnel for Hastings SkyTrain and regional to reach Waterfront Station. (Lee Haber)

This concept of sharing infrastructure appears straightforward, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to implement. Technical aspects such as the power supply and vehicle widths will need to be carefully designed to make this infrastructure-sharing arrangement work. Construction schedules will need to be coordinated so that complications in one section don’t cause unnecessary delays in another section. Successfully employing this approach will require a mental leap beyond how we usually build infrastructure.

However, the potential savings would be tremendous, likely in the billions of dollars. It would be tragic if we missed this opportunity due to shortsightedness. If we want a transit network that will provide efficient, environmentally sound, and affordable service for generations to come, we need to embrace building more projects together at the same time.

It may seem uncomfortable and unorthodox at first but ultimately makes sense — as well as dollars and cents.

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