Marcus lives in Vancouver and doesn’t drive, so I said: “Let’s go to every single station on the SkyTrain network.” He said:
“This sounds like a bad idea…but ok.”
We started off in high spirits off Broadway-City Hall station, then we were tired by the time we got to King George. Marcus suggested we get some fried chicken and beer at Lougheed Town Centre so we recovered from our spell of fatigue. Then, by VCC-Clark we have returned to our fatigued state.
Canada Line
We started here!
The Canada Line is a joke, it looks like a Disneyland ride and has the carrying capacity of a double-decker bus, its efficiency (or lack of it) hardly justifies the effort used to lay and maintain the tracks. The rapid acceleration and sudden braking also leaves much to be desired in terms of ride quality. The seats are generous, as are the body sizes of many on a typical North American fast-food diet.
The trains should be longer, or at least the platforms should be longer to accommodate the future expansion of the network. Parallel seating would also make it much easier to walk along the train and provide more standing room in rush hour. Better yet, flipping seats provide a bicycle and wheelchair stowage area to increase the carrying capacity of the train. The Canada Line is new, but it’s built like an old system.
Expo Line
King George – end of the line in Surrey
The oldest line is actually the most practical line; stations are placed where people live, work, and spend their leisure time at. There are multiple exists at some of the stations providing easy access to local businesses and residential neighbourhoods. Canada Line has station entrances in the middle of parks and the Millennium Line has stations suspended on top of highways in the middle of used car lots.
The Expo Line also appears to serve some of the busier neighbourhoods. The bifurcation from Columbia may have been poorly designed leading to a lack of service towards Braid, but providing higher frequencies to Surrey was a wise choice. I hope they will extend it downwards to Newton to serve more communities, a light rail is not enough!
Millennium Line
We took a Renfrew the entire system
Its platforms can carry four-car trains, but only runs on two-car trains for now. It has been extended to Coquitlam in 2017 on what’s called the Evergreen Extension. I have no idea why it’s coloured differently on the in-train system diagram…but it’s really just the same line, it initially confused me because I thought I needed to change trains to continue my journey.
You can also change onto the West Coast Express that takes you all the way into the valley to Mission City. The stations in Coquitlam don’t really go anywhere, the train skips through the high-density urban areas and makes stops at desolate municipal parks. More people take the bus than the train because it actually gets them to where they want to go. TransLink said they would extend it all the way to UBC right along Broadway, but I have yet to see them break ground on this project.
