SkyTrain Really Isn’t A Regional Distance Based, Rapid Transit System

First published in 2022, this post remains extremity relevant today.

Four years have gone by and the cost today of the Expo Line extension to Surrey is now estimated at $7 billion and that is just for the guideway, which the federal government is paying 40%of the cost.

Zwei has been told privately that the full cost of the extension, including the operations and Maintenance Centre #5 may exceed $10 billion! By comparison, the Massey Tunnel replacement has now soared past $8.3 billion.

Yet, ridership is dropping on the regional transit system and has been in an ever steepening decline for the past decade.

The sense I get from TransLink, Metro Vancouver, the provincial NDP, and regional mayors and politcans, that the now, $17 billion, full program to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines (Broadway Subway), mere 21.7 km, will reverse this trend in declining ridership.

I think not, as the problems with TransLink including financial issues, coupled with a declining ridership, point to major structural issues that the provincial government, Metro Vancouver, TransLink and the mayor’s Council on Transit, refuse to address.

The problem with declining ridership may be in part, SkyTrain itself, where a very expensive1970’s light metro system was developed to cope with 1960’s, 9 to 5 traffic issues, where commuters took a bus to a transit hub, transfer to SkyTrain to complete the trip downtown.

Today, downtown Vancouver is no longer the main destination for commuters and taking the bus is both slow, even slower on the return journey and taking the car in most cases, is far faster and far more convenient.

Building more SkyTrain will only exacerbate the problem.

The echo of American engineer, Gerald Fox, reverberates:

But, eventually, Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT in its lesser corridors, or else limit the extent of its rail system. And that seems to make some TransLink people very nervous.

Posted by zweisystem on Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Something to think about.

What Zwie has tried to convey for decades, that the driverless light-metro is a money hog and building more, will only see more tax money sucked into this heavily subsidized black hole.

Part of the problem is that the mainstream media and TransLink’s lil darlin, the Hive do not report on costs, just the hype and hoopla of building more SkyTrain.

The financial debate is purposely not reported as not to dampen local SkyTrain hue and cry by the local SkyTrain lobby.

The following comment by Haveacow, a Canadian transportation Engineer is a must read for all those armchair SkyTrain enthusiast and then wonder about this:

At the same time that billions of dollars are being lavished on two very expensive, yet completely unnecessary light metro extension, Emergency Care is collapsing in the province.

One can almost draw a straight line from SkyTrain expansion to eroding healthcare in the province.

The Skytrain really isn’t a regional distance based, rapid transit system. It is a inner suburb to downtown or a inner suburb to inner suburb rail rapid transit system.

The line extension fron Surrey to Langley (SLS) is and will be showing just how expensive the technology is to build and how expensive it will be to operate. Even 22 years after opening it will still be only moving around 5000 passengers per km per day or about 75% of the current passengers per km/per day average of the existing system. This means that this portion of the Expo line from Surrey to Langley will require more subsidy to operate than the already existing Skytrain system does simply due to geographic distance and attract fewer passengers at the same time.

Nothing illustrates the geographic limitation of the technology more than current SLS extension does. Each new significant segment of Skytrain, anything more than 8 to 10 km that is built further and further out from existing Skytrain yards seems to require, an entirely new yard or a major expansion of an existing one, just so servicing and train-set redeployment can be done efficiently and in a timely manner. Train storage and actual maintenance capacity is a whole separate issue. That means each extension becomes even more expensive due to the fact that, a new yard and servicing site must be constructed each time the system grows outward horizontally. Ottawa’s LRT system desperate to keep costs down, make the new yards, light maintenance centres instead of full ones, saving hundreds of millions of dollars without seriously impacting maintenance. Each new Skytrain Yard or OMC (operations and maintenance centres) is and must be because of the automation, a full service yard.

Yes, as a rail network grows in length and number of train-sets, more storage and servicing capacity is needed. However this driverless railway system requires very large, heavily protected and computerized yards, instead of just a simple set of ladder track (multiple sets of track sidings used for storage) connected to and parallel to the main line running track itself, no large storage buildings required, just a protected operations caban and maybe extra fencing.

This is how GO Transit builds new Train Storage facilities. Actually maintenance is done at 2 very large maintenance centres on a specific schedule. Keep in mind, this is a system with over 500 km of main line track and over 850 engines and passenger coaches with very little automation. The new GO Transit Region Rail Network (formerly GO RER) won’t change this situation too dramatically until, a lot of the planned Bi-Level EMU’s are purchased because the EMU’s will require an entirely new separated or a severely altered existing maintenance centre.

The following should be Emailed to every politicians, federal, provincial and civic in BC.

Here is something else to think about. This line extension, according to TransLink and the provincial government of BC, is going to move 56000 passengers a day upon opening in 2028. That’s roughly 53% of the daily passengers per line-km average for the rest of the SkyTrain system (3500 passengers per km per day vs 6613 passengers per km per day).

They both admits that this is the equivalent to what the 99 B express bus line moved per day in 2019. They are spending billions to move the same number of passengers you already move on Broadway with buses. They are currently spending $2.83 Billion (updated to July 8 2026 dollars $4 billion) to move passengers in a 5.7 km SkyTrain tunnel under Broadway, the busiest corridor in the city. Yet it’s good to spend somewhere between $1.67 billion and $2.17 billion (updated to July 8 2026 dollars $3 billion+ dollars) more, to move the same number of passengers per day between Surrey and Langley.

Our South-East Bus Transitway moved more people than that per day in 2019 and it sure wouldn’t cost that much to build.

Toronto spent only $2.3 million on King Street in downtown Toronto to improve passenger service on a streetcar corridor which moved more people per day in 2019 than the SLS line extension will move on opening day (84000 vs 56000) at a cost of billions.