Work on a $60-million upgrade to the Commercial-Broadway station starts next year. It’s one of seven station upgrades underway or in the planning, design or pre-construction stages along the Expo Line.
The Commercial-Broadway project is part of TransLink’s Expo Strategy to address growth on the Expo line for the next 30 years.
“It’s going to be 30 years old coming up soon, so we’ve identified seven stations that need upgrades to improve capacity, access, safety and security,” explained Jeff Busby, TransLink’s senior manager for project development. Busby said the Commercial-Broadway station is one of the largest upgrade projects and the busiest station.
This is the second phase of work after the first phase in 2009.
“This is the next, larger chunk of the work. It’s really about accommodating the growth in the people that are transferring between the Millennium and Expo lines.”
There are already 90,000 people who use the trains at the station daily and another 60,000 that connect with buses. Once the Evergreen Line opens in 2016, ridership will increase.
“We’re not sure of the precise figure as a result of Evergreen. What we’re doing across the line is making sure that the Expo Line is capable of accommodating double the number of people using it. That includes station upgrades, fleet upgrades — so additional rail cars, as well as [upgrading] power and some of the other supporting systems,” Busby said.
Busby said demand at the station is driven in part by walk-up traffic from people in the neighbourhood, but it’s mostly from people arriving at the station from further away and changing trains or connecting to the 99 B-Line or other buses.
The station upgrade involves adding an additional platform that will be built to the east of the current station that serves the Expo trains. There will be a bridge from that new platform across Broadway and a widening of the bridge that connects to the Millennium Line trains. Safeway is modifying its store to allow for the platform to be built.
Other improvements include additional retail space, a secure bike parking room for about 70 bikes and a new shelter for the 99 B-Line. TransLink launched a queuing system for the 99 B-Line last summer to deal with line-up problems. Busby said a recent survey revealed 69 per cent of respondents believe it improved the situation.
“That pilot is helping us design the shelter. It’s basically telling us information about how large the shelter needs to be to effectively accommodate queues there,” he said.
Construction is expected to start early in 2015. Busby said a lot of the preconstruction activities will be away from where passengers would be impacted. TransLink doesn’t expect the station itself to ever be closed and when there are changes that would impact passengers, TransLink will provide advance notice.
Disruptions aren’t expected to be like that experienced recently at the Main Street station. For several months, regular SkyTrains didn’t stop at the station due to construction associated with TransLink’s Expo Strategy. The only way to reach Main Street–Science World was by Train2Main, a special two-car train that stopped at all stations between Waterfront and Commercial–Broadway.
It faced lag times. Commuters used the #Train2Main hashtag to express frustration on social media.
Service returned to normal last weekend.
“We’ve been receiving some questions about whether or not this will be like the Train2Main situation we had at Main Street station. If that’s the standard, this will not be as disruptive in the sense that there will be no changes to train service required to actually finish construction,” Busby said.
Riders can fill out an online survey on TransLink’s website until Dec. 15, which asks whether they have enough information about the project and how they’d like to be informed about changes.
- With files from Chris Cheung
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