Elevated guideway construction begins for Surrey-Langley SkyTrain | Daily Hive

Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project reaches milestone of beginning elevated guideway construction

Fleetwood Flyer gantry crane at Bakerview-166 Street Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, as seen in July 2025. (Government of BC)

Major construction work on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project began just 10 months ago in November 2024.

And already, just under one year in, so much construction progress can be seen along the 16-km-long route mirroring Fraser Highway of extending the Expo Line from the existing terminus of King George Station in Surrey City Centre to Langley City Centre.

This includes structural and foundational work for the concrete pillars to support the elevated guideway and eight new stations.

The first of these completed concrete pillars is now also being used to temporarily support four special gantry crane machines, which are used to install the elevated guideway.

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The construction project has reached a major milestone in the installation process of the individual concrete elevated guideway segments.

These gantry launchers are long, horizontally oriented cranes that raise the pre-cast concrete segments into place for installation. With caterpillar-like movements, using a combination of rollers and hydraulic systems, the heavy truss equipment incrementally slides forward along the construction route, using the next new concrete columns as the footings and begins the process all over again.

Each gantry crane measures over 100 metres in length — longer than the length of a SkyTrain station platform — and weighs over 400 tonnes.

The elevated guideway from King George Station to Langley City Centre Station will comprise about 4,400 pre-cast concrete segments — all manufactured from a temporary pre-cast plant at a 30-acre site in Campbell Heights. The first pre-cast concrete segment was poured in April 2025, and the last segment is scheduled to be manufactured at the facility by Summer 2027.

fleetwood flyer gantry crane bakerview-166 street station surrey langley skytrain september 2025

Fleetwood Flyer gantry crane at Bakerview-166 Street Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, as seen in September 2025. (Government of BC)

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Fleetwood Flyer gantry crane at Bakerview-166 Street Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, as seen in July 2025. (Government of BC)

fleetwood flyer gantry crane bakerview-166 street station surrey langley skytrain september 2025 2

Fleetwood Flyer gantry crane at Bakerview-166 Street Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, as seen in September 2025. (Government of BC)

surrey spritner gantry crane 152 street station surrey langley skytrain july 2025 3

Surrey Sprinter gantry crane at 152nd Street Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, as seen in July 2025. (Government of BC)

The erection and installation of the segments using these bridge-like cranes is highly repetitive, reliable, and relatively quick.

Think of this equipment almost as if it were the elevated-construction method equivalent of a tunnel boring machine.

After the gantry crane machines are assembled at their various respective starting points along the route, they first undergo a testing process before being launched to begin the actual construction work. Trucks will transport the pre-cast segments from the Campbell Heights plant to the construction sites on Fraser Highway, serving to continuously feed each of the four machines.

The “Fleetwood Flyer” — the name of the first crane — was assembled late this spring and launched just a few weeks ago. Moving westward from its starting point of Bakerview-166 Street Station to reach 152nd Street Station, it will lift over 1,000 guideway segments into place.

Earlier this month, the “Langley Launcher” was launched, now lifting guideway segments into place — moving eastward from Hillcrest-184 Street Station to Langley City Centre Station. It will be responsible for about 1,350 guideway segments.

The remaining two grantry crane machines will be launched before the end of 2025.

Sometime over the coming weeks, the “Surrey Sprinter” will begin its work. It will install over 900 guideway segments, moving westward from 152nd Street Station to King George Station.

This will be followed by the launch of the “Clayton Clipper,” installing about 1,150 guideway segments — moving westward from Hillcrest-184 Street Station to Bakerview-166 Street Station.

surrey-langley skytrain gantry crane routes

Gantry crane routes for the construction of the concrete elevated guideway for Surrey-Langley SkyTrain. (Government of BC)

17916 fraser highway surrey skytrain omc5 operations and maintenance centre

Site of SkyTrain’s future OMC5 at 17916 Fraser Highway, Surrey, along the future Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension of the Expo Line. (Government of BC/Daily Hive)

If all goes as planned, all four gantry cranes will fully complete their respective assigned elevated guideway construction work by Summer 2027.

Railway infrastructure, electrical, and automatic train control systems installation work on the elevated guideway will begin in April 2026 and conclude in December 2028. Station construction and other related work will also be finished by late 2028.

The full system testing and commissioning of the extension will begin in late 2026 and end in September 2029.

Based on this entire timeline, the intention is to open the Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension for regular service by the end of 2029 — just two years after the Millennium Line’s Broadway extension to Arbutus opens in Fall 2027.

As well, all 235 new generation Mark V trains — configured into 47 five-car trains — will fully arrive by 2029, including 30 cars (six five-car trains) ordered to boost capacity to help serve the Surrey-Langley extension. The first few Mark V trains went into service earlier this summer.

A one-train ride between Langley City Centre Station and Waterfront Station in downtown Vancouver will be 65 minutes, while the trip between Langley City Centre Station and King George Station will be 22 minutes.

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November 2024 revised design for Green Timbers Station on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension. (Government of BC)

The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project carries a total cost of $5.996 billion.

Separately, there will also be a major project to build a fifth operations and maintenance facility (OMC5) for SkyTrain’s Expo and Millennium lines system, situated on a vacant 37-acre site at the southeast corner of the intersection of Fraser Highway and 176 Street (Pacific Highway) — immediately adjacent to the Expo Line extension’s elevated guideway.

OMC5 will be similar in size and importance to the SkyTrain maintenance and train storage yards at Edmonds in Burnaby (OMC1) and the current construction project of a new facility near Braid Station in Coquitlam (OMC4), which will reach completion and open in 2027.

According to Infrastructure BC, it will cost over $1 billion. Procurement for the main contractor has yet to begin for this project, which is entirely independent of the current Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction.

The property for OMC5, situated near the Serpentine River, has soft soils. Early site construction works on OMC5 began earlier this summer, specifically with replacing the site’s vegetation and peat with a layer of sand. Between Fall 2025 and late 2026, crews will haul and place additional sand and gravel. Then from late 2026 to early 2029, there will be preload settlement, with minimal activity on the site. After preload settlement concludes, major construction work will begin, with an aim to complete the facility by 2033.

The provincial government is leading the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project, which will be handed over to TransLink upon completion. TransLink is expected to be responsible for the delivery of OMC5.

Additionally, TransLink’s new state-of-the-art control centre building for the Expo and Millennium lines will open at OMC2 in Edmonds in 2026. This $327-million control centre — replacing the small and outdated 1980s-built control centre next door at OMC1 — will better serve both the Broadway and Surrey-Langley extensions and the SkyTrain network’s future growth.

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