Progress for Evergreen Line and Surrey’s LRT

Transit system to expand in coming years

The new Evergreen SkyTrain Line is set to be up and running in early 2017. In Surrey, the LRT system is being re-shaped to find a better funding source. Coquitlam, Port Moody and Surrey all anticipate new tracks of connectivity in the Lower Mainland.

Originally set to begin service in 2015, unsteady soil between the Coquitlam and Port Moody sections of the Evergreen Line pushed the two-kilometre-long tunnel boring back by over a year. With the boring now complete, the line will open next year and run from Lafarge Lake-Douglas station to VCC-Clark via Lougheed Town Centre station.

“We’ve been waiting for Evergreen for my adult life, since I was a student at SFU,” says Richard Stewart, the Mayor of Coquitlam. “We’re really ecstatic that it’s finally getting to Coquitlam.” With the original project proposed in the 1990s, the Evergreen Line will connect the North East Sector of Metro Vancouver to the existing Millennium, Expo, and Canada Lines.

When the tunnel boring was first halted, Mayor Stewart knew that the project’s completion would be pushed back. “High pressure combined with wet sand sluffed into the [boring] machine. It was stuck in one spot for six months while they tried to solve it,” says Stewart. “During that six months we knew the critical path toward the summer of 2016 was out of the window.”

According to Statistics Canada, the population of the City of Coquitlam in 2011 was 126,456, an increase of 10.4 per cent since 2006. Similarly, Port Moody saw a 19.9 per cent increase in population to 32,975 people from 2006 to 2011.

“We now have more than enough population to support the line,” says Stewart. “It really is a game-changer in a lot of ways.”

In Surrey, the city is working to come up with an alternate solution to fund the proposed Light Rail Transit line. The LRT would be an upcoming reality if the 2015 transit referendum had passed, and would link Surrey City Centre with Guildford, Langley, and South Surrey.

“When we get LRT, it’ll connect a lot of the centre’s of Surrey: Guildford, Surrey Centre, Newton, Fleetwood, and going onwards to Clayton Hill and Langley,” says Randeep Sarai, the Liberal member of parliament for Surrey City Centre. “It connects a lot of communities together, and that is vital to Surrey.”

Sarai explains that the federal and provincial governments will move ahead with the project once the surrounding cities find alternative ways to fund their part in creating the Light Rail Transit line.

“Within Surrey, 70 per cent of people commute and work within [the city]. They don’t actually connect necessarily with Vancouver, so it’s an internal commute,” says Sarai. “To make that commute a lot easier, a lot more commuter friendly, a lot greener, I think Light Rapid Transit or any other configuration along with the SkyTrain is the proper answer.”

An LRT line would also help to put Surrey on the map as an environmentally conscious city, while adding a convenience factor in transportation. With an expected 195,000 people living within walking distance of the line, the hop-on hop-off service will also bring a high volume of traffic to local businesses. “It allows a lot of easy access in and out, and it helps businesses along the route a lot more,” says Sarai.

“It’ll take a lot of cars off the street,” says Sarai. “The ease of use is prevalent and evident and people will start using it a lot more.” The City of Surrey estimates that within the next 30 years, it’ll see 300,000 people move to the area, making the LRT system an essential addition to the city.

Currently, Translink is working on a 10-year investment plan to come up with an outline of a pay structure for the project. The City of Surrey will hold the third phase of public consultation in 2016, which will focus on the public’s involvement and elements of the station designs.