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.

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 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.

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i think another north-south line, probably along Willingdon and passing through Metrotown, Brentwood, BCIT, Playland, and going into North Van, turning west until the Seabus terminal would be ideal. To the south it could stretch to Queensborough and then South Surrey.

It'll never go all the way to West Van though, too many NIMBYs.

But we desperately need a skytrain line that crosses the Burrard inlet.

Basically

1. pick a transport hub
2. get it on the line
3. build fucking express and freight runs too (see:NYC)

This is gonna suck as tsawassen and shipping is so far out there, but if we can rediscover the joys of shipping via metro like in the '40s, it'll become massively valuable.

Speaking of the 40s, we had the BCER back then for express commuter electric rail traffic all the way out to Agassiz I think. Let's do that again.

Housing in Vancouver is completely unsustainable no matter how much housing advocates crow about densification. There’s this belief that everyone should be able to live downtown, and it’s simply not going to happen.

The only solution is to expand out into the valley to enable people to live there but use transit to work downtown. Maybe if housing expanded out to Hope and had a high speed rail system to get downtown in under an hour we could get rents under $1500 a month for 2BR.

Nothing else is going to work.

I’m 100% gonna get downvoted by people who still believe everyone in Canada can live in the Tri Cities or have an argument against urban sprawl, however I’m a realist, not a dreamer.