The SkyTrain Follies Continue – SkyTrain Everywhere!
This YouTube post has been creating a lot of local chatter, until I started fact checking, then the posts disappear. Strange that.
The SkyTrain Lobby hates “reality checks”.
Here is one of the many issue that the SkyTrain Lobby ignores, the province can afford only one light-metro line a decade.
Example:
1980’s – the Expo Line, built is 4 sections until the early 90’s.
1990’s – the Millennium Line – formerly the Broadway Lougheed Rapid Transit Project (formerly LRT).
2000’s – the Evergreen Line (the uncompleted portion of the Broadway Lougheed R/T Project.
2010’s – the Canada Line.
2020’s – the Broadway subway (now costing $4 billion).
2030’s – the Surrey/Langley extension – including the Operation & Maintenance Centre #5 – $7 billion (aprox. $3 billion short of funding).
2040’s – Broadway subway to UBC? (Cost in 2024 dollars, now $8 billion).
Both the Expo and Millennium Line’s extension costs have risen significantly and now are surpassing $16 billion. The Broadway subway to UBC is now pegged at $8 billion and that is in 2024 dollars!
Then there is the issue of the vehicle availability as the Expo and millennium Lines operate the now called proprietary Movia Automatic Light metro system now owned by Alstom and Alstom is the sole supplier of the trains operated.
Alstom has strongly hinted that they will cease production once the Vancouver fleet renewal order is finished as Vancouver is the only customer.
Alstom inherited MALM when they purchased Bombardier’s rail division and MALM, being a proprietary railway, with an extremely poor record of sales, with only seven systems built in almost fifty years, is seen a superfluous, especially since it conflicts with Alstom’s in-house products.
Yes, other companies can produce MALM compatible cars, but at a cost, as the new cars would have to designed and safety cased the new trains before they could offer the product.
As we do not know the transit vehicle market will be like 20 years from now, there is a possibility no company would produce cars for such a small market, leaving the cars being custom built, further adding to the costs.
As for the bridges mentioned, according to my sources, were not designed for SkyTrain extensions, rather for “rapid transit” which includes bus rapid transit or BRT.
The author of the post also mistook run-a-way tracks as proof of further extensions. Run-a-way track, several train lengths long, past the station are common on R/T projects and deal with trains with braking problems or a signal failure, prevents the train jackknifing onto the station platform, when it hits the buffer.

The preceding photo is not from a movie set, but the 2014 Chicago metro accident where a derailed train climbed the escalator at a station!
SkytTrain construction in Metro Vancouver is strictly done for politcal reasons and not practical reasons and those who want more SkyTrain, do not fully understand the financial and operational implications of continued building with a proprietary light metro system and that includes the provincial premier; Metro Vancouver; TransLink and the Mayor’s Council on Transit.
The real question that is never asked is simply; “What is the real costs and where will the funding for new SkyTrain extensions come from?”
The video is a typical “grab bag” of future projects. Yes, no real allowance for planning has taken place. The designers left a group of tail back tracks but hasn’t prepared the community for the extension of the line. You can leave empty spaces but unless you are constantly telling the community about it, they will always be “very surprised” when the decision is made to actually begin planning it. A massive sign should read, “This linear park isn’t permanent its temporary, a Skytrain extension is coming!”.Even then, I guarantee somebody will complain about it.
Most importantly, the capital costs or the future capital cost is never mentioned compared to the future costs of other cheaper rapid transit technology. York Region Transit was the first agency I have ever seen to showed graphically how much more expensive a short subway extension is compared to a similar cost of its medium capacity roadway median busway, locally refered to as Rapidways. The reality is that, 8.5 km of subway costs as much as 113.7 km of roadway median BRT Rapidway in York Region. Comparative costs do matter.
Thank you. during the SkyBridge era, the late Des Turner (who got me started in this) organized a meeting with a bridging engineer (DES was a Chemical Engineer and upon retirement, went back to university and obtained a degree in Urban Planning) and what he told us was an eye opener. Rail Bridges are a completely different animal than vehicle bridges and are built slightly differently. The Engineers wasn’t a big fan of cable stayed bridges, even though they were cheaper, to paraphrase “cable stayed bridges are simply suspended cantilevers with the cables balancing the loads and if there is a failure, the roadway will collapse like a deck of cards”.
The cable stayed bridge in Italy did exactly that, though it wasn’t a true cable stayed bridge, but used concrete instead of cables.
The engineer told us that he was extremely worried about the survivability of a cable stayed bridge in a major earthquake as he felt the SkyBridge was much too lightly built for that.
Just a little add on here. The Yonge St. North Subway Extension from Finch Station in the City of Toronto into York Region to Hwy. #7 in Richmond Hill-Richmond Hill Centre Station, which is also a GO Train stop (Richmond Hill is a lower tier municipality in York Region). The line extension is exactly 8.54 km long. The $5.6 Billion dollar project has $1.12 Billion coming from York Region itself. Just their part of the subway line could build over 46 km’s of BRT Rapidway for York Region Transit. I’m not against the project but wow, that kind of cost differential is significant.
Sorry, rechecked that, 22.7 km not 46 km. Still a huge price differential, their $1.12 Billion portion of the Subway project would pay for 3 of the next BRT Rapidway expansion projects by itself.
SkyTrains advantages are the no “level crossing” advantage that helps reliability and the unstaffed train that helps the manpower flexibility issue. If trams had no level crossings and no drivers, then there would something worth pursuing.
Zwei replies: This is a complete “man of straw” argument and has no validity as is the man power issue. Sorry, this has all been dispelled about three decades ago!
Ah, North America and railway crossings are seen as a major issue. It is a major issue because North American drivers do not obey traffic signals. When we were in Vancouver twenty years back, we were appalled by Vancouver drivers disobeying traffic signals and from what we see now, the problem is far worse.
On our side of the pond level crossings are protected by gates and woe to the driver who disobeys the gates. A heavy fine for disobeying or if a car is hit by a train, penalties may include a lifetime ban from driving.
Unprotected crossings, are mostly foot paths or farm crossings, those using the route the onus is on the user to ensure that the right of way is clear.
The rage for driverless trains is waning on our side of the pond, except for metros, due to their high costs and fallibility. Most union agreements demand an attendant on board every train for safety reasons. One might add that driverless transit systems tend to have more employees than those with drivers simply because the nature of public transport. Health and safety rules in the EEC also includes attendant/drivers on metros and at least one employee at each station.
I’m not sure why you say Langley is part of the 2030s when it’s scheduled to open in the late 20s. Maybe OMC5 will take longer. The UBC extension should be in the 2030s and rail to the north shore should be hot on its heels.
The foot dragging on the SFU gondola continues to amaze me. It’s got one of the highest positive business case ratings in BC history but never even makes the list of near term projects.
The one positive I can see is how quickly Grouse Mountain went from “we have a longevity problem with the blue tram” to opening day for their brand new gondola. The SFU route has road access for most of the construction sites unlike Grouse that had to use helicopters to deliver supplies and lift sections into place. It should be much quicker and easier to build.
The north shore is relatively low density so some would say that it shouldn’t be a priority for expanded rail transit, but anyone who thinks the solution is putting more buses on the bridges is delusional. One stalled car on a feeder route for either of the two bridges quickly puts every bus in North Vancouver behind schedule by an hour.
With the eventual need to replace the Iron Workers’ Memorial bridge (supposedly on the provincial radar) it’s essential that they plan to include rail. There’s no need to continue to with MALM given the relative isolation of that line. They should instead go with mainstream technology that will yield a competitive bidding process for rolling stock. For simplicity it should use the same carriage width as the Canada Line so the region can have just two different train specs going forward.
I don’t think we got a great product from Hyundai/Rotem, however. Canada Line trains seem rather slow and noisy. Acceleration seems poor, top speed is nothing to write home about and the trains struggle to go around bends. I know much of that is the result of poor tunnel/guideway design, but it strikes me that a trio of 16m carriages would handle corners better, and with less noise, than the current pair of 20m ones do.
Zwei reolies: Well Mr. Transit User a lot of hype and hoopla, that is for sure.
1) The surrey/Langley extension is about $2 to $3 billion short of funding and with a tariff war looming with the USA, the costs will escalate. Also the weak Trudeau Liberal government also means future or even promised federal funding may disappear. I would say that the SLS is not quite on life support.
2) With the cost of the Broadway subway now around $4 billion and the estimated cost of the subway to UBC now around $8 billion and facing the same funding challenges as the SLS, don’t hold your breathe.
3) R/T to the North shore – not going to happen any time soon.
4) The SFU Gondola a pure political prestigious project as there ever was one and is now said to cost around $400 million, with operating costs around $10 million annually. The foot dragging you call is because there is zero funding for it.
5) Just saying MALM is a proprietary railway and Alstom is now more than hinting they will cease production as Vancouver is now the only customer and with zero new customers on the horizon (Hint: No one wants the damn thing since the 1970’s). Continued planning for MALM transit lines would be a fools game in today’s world. The current bridge replacement program is one of political statements at this point in time, rather than practical applications for regional transportation.
6) The Hyundai/ROTEM Metro cars are a perfectly good product, but the Canada Line itself is ill designed and was ill designed to reduce the cost. The big problem I have been told was building an adhesion railway like it was a non adhesion railways, which MALM is. By the way, the smaller the metro car the higher the maintenance costs of the operation because one needs more cars to carry the same passenger loads and why MALM itself has much higher maintenance costs.
Dear @transit user
Without OMC #5 operating all the way to Langley will seriously over stress, a already heavily stressed Skytrain maintenance capacity.
You are about to spend $6 Billion (when officially you still only have $4 Billion in funding) for the extension to Langley and “all” of the extra funding will have to come from the Province of B.C. because the Fed’s have already said that’s it, no more!
The Skytrain technology is extremely expensive for what it actually does. Including, competing directly with many existing Bombardier and Alstom’s rail rapid transit technology products, that’s why Bombardier and now the present owner of Bombardier’s rail vehicle division, Alstom, didn’t and still don’t actively, promote it. This current condition isn’t likely to change any time soon.
Remember Skytrain fans, Vancouver is the only city/region that is actively planning to continue using this product into the future. Beijing will never buy it again because they can already produce a copy of it themselves. Both Yongjin, South Korea’s and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s Skytrain technology (otherwise still known as the Movia Automated Light Metro System) were so bogged down in corruption trials, it is unlikely that they will ever purchase it again. The Scarborough RT is gone and being replaced by a subway extension. Detroit’s People Mover operator just bought all the old Scarborough RT equipment from the TTC instead of upgrading the People Mover’s vehicles and track from Alstom because Toronto’s garbage, was cheaper.
Lastly, New York’s Kennedy Airport Shuttle line, which uses the Movia technology was planning an extension to their system (surprise, surprise). However, with president Trump taking office and an extraordinary anti-rail person taking over as Secretary of the US Department of Transportation and Federal Transit Administration, say goodbye to any of that funding as well as the promised funding for many rail transit projects, that haven’t already have a signed contract for federal funding.
https://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/too-expensive-airtrain-skytrain-is-scrapped/