TransLink to create new Metrotown office for SkyTrain division

Central Park Place office tower at 4555 Kingsway, Burnaby. (Google Maps)

TransLink has re-established an office presence in Burnaby’s Metrotown, albeit in a different building in the district from the public transit authority’s previous headquarters in the area.

This will be an additional hub for the staff of TransLink subsidiary BC Rapid Transit Company (BCRTC), which is the division that operates and maintains SkyTrain’s Expo and Millennium lines and the West Coast Express commuter rail.

You might also like:

The new office hub will be located within the Central Park Place office tower at 4555 Kingsway, which is kitty-corner from Station Square and about a seven-minute walk north of SkyTrain Metrotown Station.

TransLink spokesperson Dan Mountain told Daily Hive Urbanized the office space expansion for BCRTC is needed to meet growing workspace demands to accommodate the Expo Line Surrey-Langley and Millennium Line Broadway Extension projects. Without the new office space, he says, the future headcount growth will put BCRTC’s current offices over capacity.

This is a sizeable space, as BCRTC will occupy roughly 45,000 sq ft over four floors in the 2000-built tower. BCRTC will begin using the space later in 2023.

Mountain adds that the space has been leased by TransLink since 2019, and was previously used by their information technology division, which is now housed at their headquarters next to SkyTrain Sapperton Station in New Westminster.

It is part of a reshuffling of employees across the public transit authority’s office spaces in the region, with TransLink subsidiary Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC) relocating staff from their Surrey offices to the Sapperton headquarters over the coming year. The move of CMBC office staff will increase the Sapperton building’s use to full occupancy, which is also the headquarters of TransLink’s Transit Police.

According to Mountain, the reshuffle will reduce TransLink’s total office space as the Surrey offices will no longer be under lease.

Up until about a decade ago, TransLink’s headquarters were located within multiple floors of the Metrotower office complex at Metropolis at Metrotown Mall. It relocated to Sapperton to consolidate more of its employees in a single building.

By 2028, with the opening of the Expo Line Surrey-Langley extension, the entire SkyTrain network will grow to a length of about 102 km, growing by 28% in length compared to today. This includes the 2026 opening of the six-km-long Millennium Line Broadway extension to Arbutus, which is now approaching the halfway point in the construction timeline.

Construction on a new major SkyTrain control centre building is also occurring at SkyTrain’s operations and maintenance hub in the Edmonds area.

Between 2023 and 2028, BCRTC will be on the receiving end of 41 five-car new generation SkyTrain cars (205 Mark V cars) for service expansion and to fully replace the aging original Mark I cars from the 1980s and early 1990s.

To accommodate the growth of the SkyTrain car fleet, new additional operations and maintenance centres are planned near Braid Station in Coquitlam and near the future terminus of the Expo Line after expansion in Langley.

You might also like: