Surrey business group suggests street-level LRT should be reconsidered | Daily Hive

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

Should the Surrey-Newton-Guildford street-level light rail transit (LRT) project be given another gander?

Anita Huberman, the president and CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade, is suggesting LRT should be reconsidered now that TransLink has selected the King George Boulevard corridor in Surrey as one of Metro Vancouver’s first two Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects.

“It is important to note that while we eagerly anticipate the benefits of BRT, we recognize that, under different circumstances, a Light Rail Transit (LRT) system would have already been in operation. LRT still needs to be considered and perhaps with private sector investment to connect all of Surrey,” Huberman said in a statement today.

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The previous 11-km-long LRT project with 11 stops – following the same route of the existing R1 RapidBus service (previously called the 96 B-Line), along 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard between Guildford Town Centre and Newton bus exchange through Surrey – was cancelled five years ago, shortly after the re-election of Mayor Doug McCallum, who made “SkyTrain, not LRT” a key platform promise in his 2018 civic election campaign.

The currently envisioned 23-km-long BRT project within Surrey will follow the same route as the cancelled R1 RapidBus LRT project before continuing further south along King George Boulevard to reach South Surrey and White Rock.

Route and station map of the cancelled Surrey-Newton-Guildford LRT. (TransLink)

November 2023: Map of three new rapid transit corridors using buses. (TransLink)

TransLink has so far described its new BRT mode as a significantly upgraded RapidBus standard, with the inclusion of fully separated bus-only lanes along the vast majority of the BRT route, traffic signal priority at intersections, rail-like stations with amenities, and the use of special high-capacity buses.

Last month, City of Surrey staff suggested the detailed design work of the cancelled LRT project could be adapted for the BRT, such as for the construction of a median busway down the centre of King George Boulevard until at least where it meets Highway 10, and the station placements.

However, the construction and implementation costs of TransLink’s BRT projects are currently unfunded, with funding only available for detailed design and planning work. Further significant funding is needed from the provincial and federal governments to carry out the project later this decade.

“While the complete implementation of the BRT is anticipated to take five years, the section from Newton Exchange to Surrey Central can be operational in less than one year and needs to be prioritized,” Huberman continued. “This accelerated timeline would underscore TransLink’s commitment to provide immediate relief to transit users in Surrey and address the pressing challenges posed by rising gas prices, a climate emergency, and escalating traffic congestion.”

The VIVA BRT system in the York region of Ontario. (TransLink)

TransLink’s 10-year priorities through 2035 call for the completion of an exploratory business case to study grade separation – such as SkyTrain – and technology alternatives for the long-term rapid transit solution on the King George Boulevard corridor.

During a public meeting last month, Surrey city councillor Harry Bains also suggested BRT on this corridor could pave the way for an eventual SkyTrain project.

In 2019, in lieu of the street-level LRT, TransLink estimated a southward SkyTrain extension of the Expo Line along King George Boulevard from the vicinity of King George Station to 72 Avenue in Newton — paired with a short BRT route along 104 Avenue between Surrey Central Station and Guildford Town Centre — would cost between $1.2 and $1.4 billion. With the recent inflationary trend, this figure is likely now substantially higher.

Ahead of the 2018 civic election, there was mounting public opposition to the Surrey-Newton-Guildford LRT over concerns that street-level trains running through busy intersections would be highly unreliable and unsafe, given the experiences of many other LRT systems with their frequency of collisions with vehicles and pedestrians as opposed to fully grade-separated systems such as SkyTrain. Furthermore, it was argued the LRT’s slower speeds would be less competitive with private car use, and its end-to-end travel time was only marginally faster than the R1 RapidBus for a significant construction cost.

The City of Surrey previously pushed the Mayors’ Council and TransLink into supporting LRT as part of its citywide LRT network vision, with city leaders previously touting the supposed benefits of a slow train over optimal speed. But such a mantra today would completely contradict TransLink’s renewed focus on the speed, frequency, and reliability of its services to retain and attract ridership.

Prior to the project’s cancellation, construction on the LRT was scheduled to begin in 2019 for an opening in 2024. Similar to the Canada Line, which is privately operated and maintained under a P3 contract with SNC-Lavalin until the early 2040s, the LRT would have been privately operated and maintained for its first 11 years.

About $1.6 billion in unused LRT project funding was redirected to SkyTrain Expo Line’s 16-km-long Surrey-Langley extension project with eight stations. Construction on the SkyTrain extension will begin in 2024 for an opening in 2028, and a separate project will also add a major SkyTrain operations and maintenance centre near the Langley terminus to support the growing storage and maintenance needs of the SkyTrain fleet.

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