The skytrain to me is a system that needs to be grown as quickly as possible. It does such an amazing job at taking vehicles off the road lowering traffic, as well as removing pollution and road wear.
It’s also just essential for people with lower incomes. If we want to support people working to build our economy, giving everyone the ability to get to work at a reasonable and reliable rate is a good move.
It also makes Vancouver’s unaffordability slightly more manageable. People can’t afford to stock shelves downtown and also live there. Giving people a living wage is great, and if we can’t continue to do that, we should at least make it easier for everyone to live further away from where they work.
You’d have to be willfully ignorant to not recognize the incredible population growth in Surrey and Langley. Smart development would have transit in place before the homes get built, so that the growth can be directed with transit in mind, rather than car-centric suburban sprawl, which is impossible to undo once it’s built.
Really, what needs to change is the anemic funding and governance model that has everyone squabbling for funding and priority. In Hong Kong, for example, the MTR Corporation gets into the real estate business, so that it captures the increase in land value in the places where it builds the rail network.
I don’t think suburbia is impossible to undo, it’s just difficult and like pulling teeth politically. Zoning needs to be opened up in suburbia to allow home owners to upgrade their property to mixed use light-commercial and multiplex IF they want. This would allow for change as it’s needed and population pressure increases.
I disagree with the author’s opinion here. Yes, there are some very busy lines that need replacing and some mid-town/up-town areas that might be underserved, especially around the universities. But building a subway/el-train to suburbia isn’t a bad thing!
Yes it might be motivated by suburban political capital, but there will be a lot more new riders. Even the subway that replaces the 99-B line will have 100 000 riders but only a portion would be “new” riders who wouldn’t have taken the B-Line.
I’ll tell you as someone from Toronto, what happens if you play games like my city did not extending the subway north of the city limit for decades until the York University extension. By then the costs for development are way up and the disruption for any construction is enormous. Expand the transit out now, while you can.
The senior governments failed to provide a rapid transit solution to overcrowded buses that ran every three minutes, which students, professors, and faculty staff had to experience for decades. However, the government is providing a 16 km long Expo Line extension to rural, suburbia Langley, where there is no B-Line, RapidBus, or any bus route that deserves a SkyTrain replacement. For me and many others, this was the point in time when I felt that the provincial and federal governments failed not only the users of the 99 B-Line but the high proportion of Vancouverites who use public transit.
What a shit take. B-Lines deserves a SkyTrain replacement, but Langley should not need to go through the phase of overcrowded bus, it should get the SkyTrain directly. A bus line is not a proper middle step because it’s still car-oriented infrastructure.
Also what’s the point of that poll, DH? If we could get “both”, there’s no point in having a poll. DailyHive never ceases to amaze me with such garbage.
Didn’t read the article, just the headline.
SkyTrain should be built in Vancouver? In Vancouver? Helllllooo, McFly! Rapid transit already overserves Vancouver.
It’s the suburbs that is forced to drive the TransCanada highway, like Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford. We need rapid transit to outlying areas. Vancouver is fine. Why do you think the city is drowning in cars? Everybody has to drive from the burbs.
