By the Numbers: Canada Line turns 10
Credit to Author: Jennifer Saltman| Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 22:01:24 +0000
Saturday, Aug. 17 marks the 10th anniversary of the day then-premier Gordon Campbell cut the ribbon on the Canada Line, which runs from downtown Vancouver to the Vancouver International Airport and Richmond and has 16 stations along a 19-kilometre route that goes through nine kilometres of tunnel and over two bridges. Here are some facts and figures about the line.
The Canada Line, which took four years to build, was initially expected to cost $1.5 to $1.7 billion to build, but by 2006 the estimate had risen to $2.05 billion, which ended up being the total cost of the project. It was, at the time, the single most expensive project in the Lower Mainland and one of B.C.’s single biggest expenditures. The federal and provincial governments, TransLink, the Vancouver Airport Authority and InTransitBC funded the Canada Line.
The new 5.7-kilometre Broadway Subway extension to the Millennium Line is expected to cost $2.83 billion, while the proposed Surrey-Langley SkyTrain line, which would run 16 kilometres between King George SkyTrain station and the City of Langley is expected to cost $3.12 billion.
British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell and Minister of International trade, Stockwell Day cut the ribbon on Aug. 17, 2009, to officially open the new Canada Line from YVR to downtown Vancouver.
Before the Canada Line opened, it was estimated that ridership would reach an average of 100,000 boardings per day by 2013 — a goal that the line reached three years early when weekday boardings surpassed that number four months in a row in mid-2010. In its first year of operation, the line recorded about 36 million boardings. There were 207,000 boardings per day during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
A secondary goal was to have 142,000 daily boardings by 2022, another target that has been achieved. Last year, average weekday boardings were 147,700, which is a 5.3-per-cent increase over 2017, and more than 48 million boardings during all of 2018.
Thousands of people turned out on Aug. 17, 2009 to ride the Canada Line on its first day of operation.
A B.C. Supreme Court justice awarded the owners of three small-businesses — Cambie General Store, Festival Cinemas and Thai Away Home — along the Cambie Street corridor a total of $181,040 for losses attributed to the cut-and-cover construction done on the Canada Line in their neighbourhood. They were the first members of a class-action lawsuit with more than 80 plaintiffs who owned property or businesses in the corridor between 2005 and 2009 to go to trial.
TransLink appealed the judgment, and that appeal is still ongoing.
In 2009, Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel Co., was awarded $600,000 in damages as compensation for the disruption to her business, but the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the judgment in 2011.
TransLink is making a number of improvements to Canada Line service, including adding 12 two-car trains to the fleet. The first train arrived earlier this month and will go into service early next year. The rest of the trains are expected to arrive in the coming months. The trains are expected to increase passenger capacity by 25 per cent.
The total cost of the cars is $88 million, with half of the funding coming from the federal government, 33 per cent from the province and the rest from TransLink.
The line’s operations and maintenance centre is being upgraded — InTransitBC is responsible for operating and maintaining Canada Line — and new escalators (one of which has already been installed) are coming to three stations.