Frankly Speaking

Frank Bucholtz photo A SkyTrain rolls into the Lafarge Lake-Douglas station at the end of the Evergreen Line on Friday, Dec. 2, opening day for the extension of the rapid transit system. Friday was a day that many Tri-City residents thought would never come. The 11 kilometre extension of SkyTrain into Coquitlam and Port Moody, the Evergreen Line project, was officially opened by Premier Christy Clark and local mayors. Passengers started boarding the trains at 12 noon. The Evergreen Line has been a long time coming. First promised even before the Millennium Line opened in 2002, it was put on the shelf many times. Its history is instructive of the challenges involved in building rapid transit in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, and of the many twists and turns which inevitably occur when a project does finally get the green light. Way back in 1980, the provincial government decided on SkyTrain as the long-awaited rapid transit technology that would be used in the Lower Mainland. I cov...

This timetable board once was located at the Marpole station of the B.C. Electric Railway, where V&LI interurban trains went north to Vancouver, south to Steveston or east to New Westminster. It has now been relocated to the Cloverdale station of the Fraser Valley Heritage Rail Society. On Saturday, we had a chance to walk along a portion of the former Vancouver and Lulu Island rail line, better known as the Arbutus Corridor. As it turned out, it was an auspicious time to do so. On Monday, an agreement between the City of Vancouver and Canadian Pacific Railway was announced. CPR will tear up the rail line and turn the corridor over to the city, for $55 million. This 11-kilometre stretch of rail line from Kitsilano to Marpole was once a key link in an important transportation corridor. The V&LI line was built by Canadian Pacific Railway, starting in 1900, and by 1902 trains ran between downtown Vancouver and Steveston. At that time, there were just two stops outside the d...