Vancouver City Council endorses prioritizing Hastings Street rapid transit

2023 updated artistic rendering of the Mark V SkyTrain car. (TransLink)

The Hastings Street corridor has now been identified as the City of Vancouver’s preferred corridor for studying the potential next major rapid transit project directly serving Vancouver, after the future SkyTrain Millennium Line extension between Arbutus Station and the University of British Columbia (UBC).

In a vote today, Vancouver City Council endorsed making a formal request to TransLink’s Mayors’ Council to perform a rapid transit study of Hastings Street between downtown Vancouver and Hastings Park/PNE instead of the existing strategy of focusing on the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridor between UBC and Metrotown.

City Council approved the direction in a 6-3 vote, with Green Councillors Adriane Carr and Pete Fry and OneCity Councillor Christine Boyle opposed. Mayor Ken Sim was absent from the meeting.

This will “change the previously identified desire to undertake a major transit network planning study on the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridor with a study on the Hastings Street corridor between downtown Vancouver and the PNE, which is clearly where the greatest need is and where we see incredible congestion in our city,” said ABC Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, who put forward the member motion, during today’s public meeting.

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This could then connect to the North Shore via the Second Narrows, which aligns with the intent of TransLink’s Transport 2050 plan of expanding rapid transit to the North Shore, and possibly providing another major public transit service to reach Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Burnaby Mountain campus.

“If anybody has sat on Hastings in that traffic, whether you’re driving or on a bus, it’s pretty congested and awful, so I do think we need to take the long-term view there,” continued Kirby-Yung, who emphasized this is a move that does not abandon 41st Avenue/49th Avenue, but rather changes priorities.

But it will be up to the Mayors’ Council to support Vancouver City Council’s request to deviate from the Transport 2050 plan of refocusing long-term rapid transit planning on Hastings Street instead of the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridor. This decision is expected to be made by the Mayors’ Council before the end of the month, as part of their broader decision on finalizing the list of the first wave of projects under the $21-billion, 10-year transit priorities between 2025 and 2035.

“I know this corridor right through from downtown to North Burnaby and SFU is heavily taxed now in terms of congestion and movement, especially with people coming off the freeway and North Shore. So there is a need to advance better transit along this corridor,” said ABC Councillor Lisa Dominato.

Both the Hastings Street and 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridors currently feature RapidBus routes, with Hastings served by the R5 Hastings Street RapidBus (former 95 B-Line) and 41st Avenue served by the R4 41st Avenue RapidBus.

The region’s 10-year priorities call for upgrading the existing R5 Hastings Street RapidBus into Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) with separated bus lanes and other bus priority measures along the corridor between downtown Vancouver and SFU Burnaby.

However, Fry did not support the call to refocus the rapid transit planning efforts on Hastings Street, stating there is “no justification for focusing on Hastings Street” and that this is a “sensitive area for displacement” as it has “some of the most affordable housing in the city.”

Fry also said there is a growing demand for improved rapid transit along the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue, especially with the tens of thousands of residents that will be living in the future high-density developments near SkyTrain Canada Line’s Oakridge-41st Avenue and Langara-49th Avenue stations within the new Oakridge Municipal Town Centre under the Cambie Corridor Plan.

“We know we have this new municipal town centre in Oakridge that needs to be serviced, and we know we have incredibly busy bus routes. I do live just off Hastings Street, so I recognize it’s traffic busy,” said Fry.

Boyle added, “I know the current buses along both 41st Avenue and 49th Avenue are incredibly busy, and residents regularly experience pass-ups along there. That is an important part of larger, higher-grade transportation improvements for the region, so I’m not ready to support a shift of the focus to Hastings.”

But there was unanimous support for the other components of Kirby-Yung’s motion that indicates the City of Vancouver’s support to the Mayors’ Council for new bus public transit investments within Vancouver.

This includes the “urgent implementation” of bus speed and reliability improvements along Hastings Street, Kingsway, 49th Avenue, and Granville Street, which are identified as high congestion/high ridership bus corridors. Examples of such bus priority measures entail reallocating vehicle lanes and curbside parking spaces, changes to property access, bus stop balancing, turn restrictions, changes to traffic signal timing and coordination, and traffic signal priority.

Additionally, City Council unanimously endorsed TransLink’s near-term plan to create a new RapidBus route along Marine Drive/Marine Way between the Canada Line’s Marine Drive Station in South Vancouver and the Expo Line’s 22nd Street Station in New Westminster.

ABC Councillor Peter Mesizner said the RapidBus will also fill a public transit service gap for the fast-growing River District neighbourhood in the southeastern corner of the city.

During the deliberations, Kirby-Yung shared the current UBC SkyTrain feasibility study towards a project business case — work that is currently being led by the provincial government — is expected to reach completion in 2024.

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