Lol I forgot how to upload images.
Anyhow before in this thread I created a transit fantasy and I am going to post a more updated version of what I had envisioned for Vancouver. This is my updated map with some small changes:
Dark Blue = Expo Line
Yellow = Millennium Line
Dark Green = Evergreen Line
Light Blue = Canada Line
Purple = West Coast Express
Solid Orange = Surrey LRT
Light Green = Arbutus LRT
Pink = Downtown/Jericho LRT
Spotted Orange = B-Line Buses
Gray = Long Distance Passenger Trains (like Amtrak)
Overview
One great advantage that we have to our Skytrain system is its interlined portions of the network. Currently someone from Burnaby could theoretically hop on the Skytrain from Waterfront and take it all the way to their home in Sperling Lake while the person beside them can take a train all the way to Surrey. Because of the frequency of the trains in our current system, the interlined portions actually lends itself as an efficient 'sorting' system for commuters without (arguably) overcrowding in one station; and at the same time reduce the number of transfers. I am looking to exploit that advantage as well as other advantages that are overlooked in our system.
I don't think that I got the shape right for the Millennium line, so my apologies for the rookie-mistake there
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I felt like my map needed an update based on the direction that I feel that the city is going in. Unfortunately I think that Vancouver is going to get in bed with LRT so I wanted to update my transit fantasy to potentially reflect this reality.
With LRT I am going to assume, in this fantasy, that the Surrey LRT happens (*legasp*). But I am also going to assume that Metro Vancouver is going to learn a very basic and expensive lesson about grade-integrated LRT: it is not rapid transit!! Therefore the city will use LRT as a means of being able to handle larger capacities of people where it makes sense, and where it is not possible to build more skytrain lines. And since they purchased the damn trams anyways, they may as well use them as best they can. Because LRT is not necessarily rapid transit I did not list all of the stations that they would stop at, except for a few key stations. Also I am assuming that they will be electrical and/or totally green. Because if we are going to invest in some LRT piece of s... it may as well be environmentally friendly.
Expo Line
The Expo line gets extended south to Langley Central. It becomes the backbone of Surrey's transportation like it became the backbone to Vancouver's network. Surrey and Langley will then work together to redesign transit routes to feed into this new spine. As it has been proven with Translink's data, most of Surrey's and Langley's commuters are commuting within Surrey. Therefore this strong spine of rapid transit is warranted; and with it all being elevated, it makes this part of the extension very inexpensive when compared to the rest of my map.
The Expo line returns to its original interlined state that was in place before as the Millennium line will obviously increase in capacity warranting the same size of trains to be used on both lines.
Notice that Granville station is missing? Don't worry, it is still there but it is renamed as Vancouver City Centre station. And this station will be a transfer point where a commuter can transfer to any Skytrain line in the network so that it is convenient for the average commuter.
I feel that on a rapid transit network, not enough emphasis is placed on congestion-control. Vancouver City Centre station would obviously be redesigned to comfortably handle and easily transfer passengers to whichever line they desire to travel on. It will have upgrades similar to the Canada Line so that people feel confident that they are getting on the right train. Now this station serves as a major point of congestion-control on the network because it divides the focus from Waterfront station. Instead of trying to cram all of the lines into one station, encouraging everyone in the city to transfer at Waterfront, I figure that it is okay in this situation to take the heat off of Waterfront and making Vancouver City Centre the next busiest station in the network. Not only that but Waterfront already has severe people and engineering restrictions. With Vancouver City Centre, we can comfortably dig up Granville street and expand exponentially underground.
Another station that deserves mentioning is Stadium-Chinatown station... this station also serves as an element of congestion control because it would be a major transfer point to the different LRT lines that go through downtown. People can transfer here or at Waterfront if they want any of those downtown LRTs.
Because there are congestion-reduction strategies in place to try and relieve some pressure off of Waterfront Station, there isn't really too many changes here. However the addition of the Arbutus and Granville Island LRT lines may encourage development length-wise for Waterfront Station. Essentially Waterfront station has the potential of becoming a complete nightmare so careful and effective developments need to be made.
Millennium Line
Now let me introduce you to the Goliath known as the Millennium line. This beast solves the 99B-Line over crowding issues, serves as a second alternative for people south of Fraser to get to the airport, serves as a relief line to the south, and also shows Richmond and Surrey some love at the same time! With all of these functions and purposes, the Millennium line becomes the heart of the Skytrain network and now completely overshadows the Expo line.
As soon as it is possible the Millennium line will surface when heading west towards UBC. This is to reduce the costs of constructing. However I gave the Millennium line a twist: it goes to YVR.
You see, as Vancouver continues to grow so does our airport. And I'm not sure which way it would expand but I do expect that YVR will eventually expand so that it needs a rapid people moving technology to move someone from terminal 1 to the brand new terminal 2. Seeing as how we are moving people, why not continue using Skytrain technology connecting the people of the Lower Mainland even more efficiently to the airport?
The Millennium line will serve as a major connecting point to UBC and the airport, from the city; I would argue that these two destinations are/will be the most popular travelling outside of Vancouver. Not only would the Millennium line serve as a relief line to the airport, but it will also serve as a relief line to the Expo line as it continues east to Surrey and the Guildford Town Centre.
Evergreen Line
I bet you thought you would never see this guy again? Well you thought wrong!
Rising from the grave, the Evergreen line serves the people of Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Meadows. But it doesn't stop there; it goes all the way into downtown Vancouver's west end (which needed some loving) and into the heart of North Vancouver. When it hits downtown, its all downhill and underground from there as to not disturb the densely populated neighbourhoods and Stanley Park's natural beauty.
The only transfer station within downtown Vancouver, is the Vancouver City Centre station.
When I first did this line, I always thought that I should have extended it past Port Coquitlam and into Pitt Meadows and Maple Meadows... and that's exactly what I have done. But don't get me wrong, I think that at some point it becomes ridiculous to have Skytrains extend everywhere and that there needs to be a faster train service at some point. I would only extend the Evergreen line and the Expo line to Maple Meadows and Langley Centre respectively.
Canada Line
Hopefully with longer trains and longer platforms, this line gets a simple extension out to Steveston which will have express buses to the Tsawwassen Ferry terminal (moved from Bridgeport). Even if the Canada Line didn't get the extended platforms/trains, the Millennium line would bring a ton of relief making the Canada line liveable again.
Bridgeport would be given a heavy makeover to become a main interchange and bus station.
Surrey LRT
I'm going to start with the LRT that is, unfortunately, most likely to happen and that makes the least sense in the Metro....
Every city makes its mistakes. But unfortunately for Metro Vancouver and for Surrey, this mistake is a costly one. With LRT sharing the road with regular vehicle traffic, especially along KGB, the "L" line has failed as rapid transit. Whether it was the lack of organization and education that the Metro Vancouver citizens achieved during the drum-roll to the creation of this financial sink-hole, or whether it was the sheer laziness, and unwillingness to properly protest to their politicians to express displeasure, we will never know
(and, baby, we can still change this).
Surrey has been given lemons... and this is how Surrey made lemonade:
Realizing that the LRT "L" line is designed in such a way to disintegrate the definition of "rapid" to its users, Surrey has realized one thing about LRT: it can handle a decent amount of capacity and reduce carbon emissions. Because of the ineffectiveness of the LRT, Surrey now finds that Translink has abandoned the idea of expanding the LRT
(because remember: everyone in Metro Van pays for this) and so Surrey is left to fund its own extensions.
Realizing the mediocre capacity ranges of the LRT, Surrey will extend its LRT to White Rock making it grade-separated whenever possible. Because of stupidly spending money on the "L" line, Surrey now learns the lesson that Edmonton, Calgary, Denver, L.A, Houston, Phoenix, Baltimore, Portland, Tampa, London (Ontario), and Charlotte have learned before: if LRT isn't grade separated, it isn't rapid transit. And so Surrey will do its best to make all of its LRT grade-separated whenever possible.
Back to the Lemonade: Surrey does work with what its got! Since LRT can handle some capacity, the LRT can be built to reach some neighbourhoods like South Westminster and Bridgeview. It becomes a secondary collection spine within the city of Surrey, reaching where Skytrain could not. The Surrey LRT will then feed its passengers into the spine of the Metro Vancouver network: being the Expo and Millennium lines.
Arbutus LRT
This line is something that makes a lot of sense to me because a significant portion of it is grade separated (for the most part) past Arbutus AND the grade-separated portions have pretty much been there all this time making it significantly cheaper (and more effective) to construct than the Surrey LRT. This line shows up really soon: in fact it comes into play soon after the second phase of the Millennium extension to UBC is financially secured.
Why is that? Well the Canada Line has probably reached capacity by now, demanding a relief line of some sort... and because Vancouver is enraptured by the romantic idea of LRT, instead of extending platforms and trains, it wants to make a new LRT relief line!
Don't get me wrong, the Arbutus line makes total sense. But it would be made for the wrong reasons in this fantasy of mine. Anyhow, the city won't really see the effectiveness of this line until a couple of years later down the road.
This line provides a fair amount of relief from the Canada. It shows the Olympic Village some love and it also connects to the Skytrain network at various points. However it gets extended east along Hastings (but north of Hastings, my goodness) as the COV wants to keep the underground in that part of the city, reserved for freight trains. You gotta remember, Vancouver is Canada's top port city. And we need to get the goods of Canada shipped out somewhere.
The Arbutus line also has potential to extend east of Marine Drive Station, providing relief from the Skytrain network. I didn't extend it because I didn't think it would be within my lifetime
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Granville Island Line
This line was created just purely based on the fact that we used to have something similar run to Granville Island, and it was very popular from a transit user's perspective. It connects from Waterfront, going through the West End, but not down Denman as that is an insanely busy street, and then finishing at a popular destination, Granville island.
This line would extend out past Granville Island to Jericho Beach only in the summer months. As popularity for the this line would increase then Translink will extend its service to Jericho Beach to 12 months one or two stations at a time. Eventually it would run from Jericho Beach to Waterfront with 12 month service but for the beginning, it only needs to get out to Jericho in the summer time.
West Coast Express
The West Coast Express remains the primarily form of Suburban rail throughout the Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver. As the Abbotsford International Airport continues to develop, WCE will then extend its service out there adding scheduled trains based on Abbotsford Airport's busiest times.
B-Line
Here we see Burnaby take advantage of its location with a B-Line that links up people in a North-South corridor to four different lines of skytrain.
Vancouver
Vancouver will remain the centre for jobs and tourism in the Lower Mainland. It is best served by transit out of all of the municipalities in the Lower Mainland due to its need to bring everyone together within a timely manner.
The Vancouver City Centre station epitomizes this by making a single station a master transfer point where commuters have access to ALL skytrain lines in one place.
Vancouver ends up being extremely well connected within its municipal boundaries by the Evergreen line, which serves the west end, and by the Millennium line which serves UBC and the other southern neighbourhoods. It uses its LRT as collection lines and capacity reliefs that the Skytrain could not reach.
Burnaby
Burnaby ends up being a powerful bedroom community... in a good way!
Taking advantage of the ring layout of the original Skytrain design, Burnaby is extremely well serviced by rapid transit. So much so, that Burnaby functions much like a giant rapid transit roundabout; if you want to go to UBC or North Van, you head north; if you want to go to Main Street or Surrey, you head south, etc. This makes Burnaby a very convenient location if you want to travel anywhere in the Lower Mainland. To help exploit this advantage, there is even a B-Line bus that services a North-South Corridor which will open access to 4 different skytrain lines.
Tri-Cities (Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody) and Maple Meadows
Coquitlam is really aiming to be the crossroads of the east in the Lower Mainland. Like all cities in the Lower Mainland, the tri-cities can only piggy-back off of the niches that Vancouver has developed. Afterall you can't change the land but you can change what you specialize in.
This is why the Evergreen line branches off to Lafarge Lake and Maple Ridge; Port Coquitlam may end up developing its shipping industry more and will need a way to keep commuters off the road. This also opens the idea of extending the Evergreen line into Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge: to supply them with the workers living nearby. We all choose to live relatively close to where we work afterall.
Surrey
Surrey ends up becoming a behemoth with the second most population in the Lower Mainland and with one of the most hectares of land to work with. It also hosts the second most number of jobs in the Lower Mainland. Surrey will need to connect its neghbourhoods together, which is why the Expo line extension is key to its success.
Surrey Central Station will be redesigned to be a super effective sorting system for commuters. Any UBC students or airport passengers will transfer at Surrey Central to the Millennium line. And then anyone else, who is destined for downtown, will commute on the old Expo line. The Millennium line will also serve as a relief line for the morning and evening commute.
Other than that because Surrey messed up with LRT, Surrey is just going to have to make lemonade with its LRT. The LRT will be marketed to its users as a means to address capacity instead of rapid transit needs.
Also because the North-South connections are weak, the LRT will extend along 96th avenue and then head north and into the South Westminster and Bridgeview neighbourhoods. This spawns new and interesting neighbourhoods across the Fraser river from New Westminster. But instead of getting rid of the much needed industrial land, Surrey rezones for Industrial/Residential mixed neighbourhoods (you can look this up, this is happening in OV).
The LRT will connect to the Scott Road Skytrain station and it connects to the Bridgeview neighbourhood through grade separation, spawning a new micro-brewery district within Metro Vancouver. So there are lots of cool things happening in Surrey as it wields its LRT to the best of its abilities.
Richmond
I imagine that Richmond will remain industrial for the most part but that it will continue to grow westward towards the water. As a strong location for foreign (read: Chinese) investment, the waterfront grows with popularity. And therefore a small extension may be required up the unique neighbourhood of Steveston. And with the Millennium extension all the way to Surrey in the east, Richmond doesn't need a lot of infrastructure to manage itself efficiently.
Birdgeport station will become a major hub, requiring extensive work to be done on the Skytrain station to be able to accommodate airport passengers from Richmond and Surrey, and homebound commuters from UBC.
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