Surrey mayoral candidate calls for LRT, rejects King George Boulevard BRT plan | Daily Hive

Surrey mayoral candidate suggests building LRT instead of King George Boulevard BRT

Artistic rendering of the cancelled Surrey Newton-Guildford street-level light rail transit (LRT) project. (TransLink)

Linda Annis, a sitting Surrey city councillor and the mayoral candidate for the Surrey First party, says that if she is elected in the October 2026 civic election, she will make a renewed push for building street-level Light Rail Transit (LRT) on the King George Boulevard corridor.

This would be an approach for LRT from the get-go, as opposed to TransLink’s current strategy to build the King George Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line from SkyTrain’s Surrey Central Station to Semiahmoo Town Centre in South Surrey.

Annis argues that the current BRT proposal needs a “complete rethink before any commitments are made,” suggesting that the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for the extensive bus-only lanes, bus stations, traffic signal priority, and other bus infrastructure would be better spent going towards a system with long-term permanence, specifically LRT.

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During Surrey City Council’s public meeting on Monday evening, the preliminary concept for the BRT line was narrowly approved in a 5-4 vote, providing City of Surrey staff with the green light to work with TransLink to advance the project into the detailed design phase.

City Council voted along party lines, with mayor Brenda Locke and her Surrey Connect councillors endorsing BRT on the basis that it offers a pragmatic lower-cost, short-term approach to improving public transit service amid the financial challenges being faced by TransLink and the provincial government. Opposition city councillors, meanwhile, argued for a longer-term solution better suited to the city’s future needs, such as street-level LRT or SkyTrain, suggesting that the investment for BRT be redirected towards such higher forms of rail rapid transit from the get-go.

Earlier in the year, the public transit authority indicated each kilometre of its BRT mode standard will cost about $20 million. With a length of 20 km, the King George Boulevard BRT could carry a construction cost of roughly $400 million.

“Transit is all about the future, not a temporary fix,” said Annis in a statement on Monday evening shortly after City Council’s decision. “LRT requires a bigger investment, but in the end, it provides higher capacity and scalability than a rapid bus, and in a growing city like ours, we should be building for the future, and our growing population.”

“When TransLink presented to Council last week, we were told that down the road we could make a decision to switch from rapid bus to another system, which makes absolutely no sense. Why would we spend hundreds of millions, only to make a change down the road? Why not build what we actually need now?”

Annis asserts that BRT at the end of the day will be “‘just a bus,’ with limited capacity, even if the stops and stations are dressed up, and the buses are made to look futuristic in artistic renderings.”

king george boulevard brt surrey april 2026

April 2026 concept for King George Boulevard BRT. (City of Surrey)

translink bus rapid transit brt stop station f

January 2026 revised design of BRT bus stops with curbside bus-only lanes. (TransLink)

April 2026 concept for King George Boulevard BRT. (City of Surrey)

Businesses, residents, and road users would also have to endure two separate prolonged waves of years-long major construction activity — first for the BRT-related roadworks, which are anticipated to take about three to five years, and then again in the future if the corridor is ultimately upgraded to LRT or SkyTrain.

“Rapid bus looks and feels like we’re being offered a second-best substitute for what we really need,” she continued, as opposed to what a “modern LRT system” would bring.

However, according to City of Surrey staff in a report earlier this spring, based on their collaboration with TransLink staff, BRT will provide a better bus service than the existing RapidBus routes and at a lower cost, with street-level LRT carrying a per km cost that is four times higher than BRT and SkyTrain being 10 times more expensive than BRT.

Distinguished by its full grade separation, combined with the benefits of fully automated operations, SkyTrain offers a consistent combination of superior speeds, travel times, reliability, high frequencies with a low operating cost, and long-term capacity.

Although there are some additional major costs with an approach of building BRT initially, it has also been suggested that BRT helps secure the right-of-way needed for a future LRT or SkyTrain extension.

Differences in speed and capacity for street-level Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), street-level Light Rail Transit (LRT), and SkyTrain. (UBC)

A comparison of the capable speed and capacity of buses, streetcars, street-level LRT, SkyTrain, and heavy rail. (City of Vancouver)

In late 2018, shortly after that year’s civic election, TransLink’s Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT line was cancelled, and the funding set aside for the project pivoted to a SkyTrain extension of the Expo Line along the Fraser Highway corridor between King George Station and Langley City Centre.

Opponents of the LRT project at the time — many of whom supported a seamless SkyTrain extension instead — argued that LRT would serve only as a short- to medium-term solution for Surrey’s transportation needs, with minimal improvements over what an upgraded bus could do and remove optimal regional service considerations for a regional-level investment. They contended that it would have poor reliability, worsen road congestion due to the amount of street space required for the at-grade LRT right-of-way, lead to frequent collisions with vehicles and pedestrians because of the numerous busy intersection crossings — based on the experiences of other Canadian and American systems — and provide only marginal travel time improvements.

The LRT’s planned end-to-end travel time between Newton Exchange and Guildford Town Centre was estimated at 27 minutes, compared to 29 minutes on the existing R1 King George Boulevard RapidBus without any bus priority improvements, with the LRT essentially replicating the same route as the R1. For this reason, LRT would also have a relatively low ridership for its high implementation costs.

The previous Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT project was spearheaded by Surrey First’s previous governing leadership of the City, up until 2018 when the party lost its control to Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition in that year’s civic election. Surrey First had also envisioned a city-wide network of LRT lines; in July 2018, following the direction of City Council, City staff outlined a vision for building up to 140 km of street-level LRT across Surrey, including the Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT and along Fraser Highway (instead of SkyTrain).

Cancelled project: Artistic rendering of a Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT station. (TransLink)

Cancelled project: Route and station map of the Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT. (TransLink)

Cancelled project: Before and after road configurations for Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT. (TransLink)

Major construction work on the $6-billion, 16-km-long elevated SkyTrain extension between Surrey City Centre and Langley City Centre with eight stations first began in November 2024.

Earlier this week, the provincial government announced very significant progress has been made on this SkyTrain extension ever since major construction began just 18 months ago.

As of now, about 90 per cent of the foundations for the elevated guideway is complete, 75 per cent of the concrete columns supporting the elevated guideway are built, and over 30 per cent or five km of the concrete elevated guideway segments have been installed along the route. Moreover, the temporary precast concrete facility in Campbell Heights has now manufactured half of the segments of the concrete elevated guideway.

Additionally, the 16-km-long underground duct bank for SkyTrain’s electrical lines is now more than 75 per cent finished — about 12 km — and trackwork with the installation of rail on the elevated guideway first began in late April 2026. Altogether, the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension is on target to open in late 2029.

Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction, March 2026. (Government of BC)

surrey langley skytrain construction march 2026 1

Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction, March 2026. (Government of BC)

Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction, February 2026. (Government of BC)

While Annis expressed appreciation for the current SkyTrain extension being built, she asserts LRT is more suitable for the needs of Surrey — not more SkyTrain.

“The fact is, Surrey has been shortchanged when it comes to transit,” continued Annis.

“The new SkyTrain line to Langley is the first major transit investment in 40 years. SkyTrain does a good job of connecting cities, but it does not connect neighbourhoods the way LRT can. I want a transit system in Surrey that reflects our size and our growth. We’re as big as Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby combined, and we’re going to be the first city in BC with one million people. Surrey residents deserve more than RapidBus to meet their growing transit needs, and that’s what I’ll be fighting for.”

Annis’ stance on future rapid transit projects ahead of the election was revealed just ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled TransLink’s Mayors’ Council’s press conference at Surrey Central Station’s bus exchange on “future major transit expansion.” However, the press conference was abruptly cancelled on Monday evening shortly after City Council’s decision, but due to a “scheduling conflict,” with the event set to attended by mayor Locke, Mayors’ Council chair and Port Coquitlam mayor Brad West, and additional unspecified mayors from across Metro Vancouver. No representatives of the provincial and federal governments would be present.

Although the King George Boulevard BRT and Langley-Haney Place BRT projects are currently in the detailed design phase for a targeted 2027, the construction costs of both projects — totalling roughly $800 million — are completely unfunded.

At least one other major Surrey mayoral candidate has announced a part of their transportation platform.

Imagine Surrey mayoral candidate Mike Starchuk — a former Surrey city councillor and former BC NDP MLA for the riding of Surrey-Cloverdale — wants to see a SkyTrain study performed for the King George Boulevard corridor between Surrey City Centre and South Surrey. Based on the understanding that BRT right-of-ways could be repurposed for permanent rail rapid transit infrastructure in the future, Starchuk’s party is supportive of the King George Boulevard BRT, and wants to see the designation of two additional BRT priority corridors: Scott Road/72nd Avenue — as an upgrade of the existing R6 Scott Road RapidBus — and 104th Avenue/152nd Street.

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