Vancouver school at the end of the Broadway SkyTrain extension prepares for throngs of passengers
Credit to Author: Joanne Lee-Young| Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2019 01:00:41 +0000
An elementary school located near where the Arbutus terminus station of the Broadway SkyTrain extension will be built is speaking up against plans for a busy bus loop that will be kitty-corner from its playground.
“It will be 25 metres from where the kids play in the playground,” said Michael Yaptinchay, principal of St. Augustine, an independent Catholic school run by the Vancouver Archdiocese on Arbutus Street at West 7th Avenue.
The Arbutus station will be located at the northeast corner of Broadway and Arbutus, but the bus loop will back along Arbutus Street from Broadway down to West 8th Avenue.
There is currently a building housing a Rogers store at the northeast corner of Arbutus and Broadway that is owned by the City of Vancouver. The lot at Arbutus and West 8th, where the bus loop is planned, is not occupied, although it is home to Christmas tree vendors at this time of year.
TransLink’s plan is for passengers getting off the SkyTrain at the new terminus station to transfer to 99 B-Line buses to the University of B.C. via the bus loop.
The 5.7-km SkyTrain extension will include six new underground stations from VCC Clark before ending at Broadway and Arbutus.
Yaptinchay said the school community is supportive of the Broadway SkyTrain extension, but had been expecting it would be built directly to UBC, not in the future, but more “immediately”.
TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond said in mid-October that, while it would be ideal to construct a line out to UBC in one phase, it wasn’t possible. The funding for the Arbutus-to-UBC extension hasn’t been secured, nor has enough planning and design work been completed.
Yaptinchay said the school has had a “few meetings with the provincial project team, the City, and TransLink. We are just in communication with them right now.”
He said the school community found out the location of the bus loop from details reported in the media in September.
“We were shocked to see it will be so close to the school. If it was on the south (east) side of Broadway, it would be different.”
On that side of the street, there is a long-standing dry cleaning company, Fletchers Fabricare, but the land was purchased by TransLink for $16.8 million in Spring 2018.
Yaptinchay said there are issues of security and safety to be addressed as there will be a significant increase of pedestrians in the area. There will also be the impact on kids playing outside so close to what will be increased levels of emissions at the bus loop.
TransLink passed questions raised by Postmedia about planning for the station to the province’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, since “it is leading this project.”
The ministry said it is aware of concerns related to the bus loop and station at Broadway and Arbutus, and that it is engaging with the school community and the parish.
“Plans to mitigate potential impacts are in development and will be ready prior to construction, which begins in about a year,” said the ministry in a statement, adding the project will reduce overall congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, and improve travel times.
— with files from Gordon McIntyre and Tiffany Crawford