Panel recommends Broadway light rail be underground
Posted February 6, 2014 12:55 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – What should a light rail line going down the Broadway corridor out to UBC look like?
A panel of experts suggests TransLink sit down with the City of Vancouver to talk it out.
One of the key highlights of a new report by the panel is to build the train entirely underground.
There are concerns about densifying neighbourhoods where transit stops would go, but the panel says that may not have to happen if issues are ironed out during the planning stages.
“The Broadway Corridor runs from very dense neighbourhoods like at Granville Street and Broadway, Cambie Street and Broadway to UBC and in between that are single-family neighbourshoods, established neighbourhoods — those all need to be thought of very individually. And where the stations end up, we shouldn’t necessarily be thinking of extreme density or maybe any density in certain cases. We need to look neighbourhood by neighbourhood,” says Alan Boniface with the Urban Land Institute of BC (ULI BC).
ULI BC invited the panel here to look things over; Boniface thinks it was a good idea to have a fresh set of eyes look over the situation.
The panel also found it would be best that organizations like TransLink, the City of Vancouver and local mayors plan the line out together.
“To be fair to ourselves, we built the Canada Line in a hurry because of the Olympics — let’s be a little more deliberate this time. Let’s think about how those nodes, and how the people are affected and the communities are affected in between and get them on board. Let’s have a complete conversation,” adds Boniface.
The line could cost as much as $2.8 billion but it still remains unclear where all that money would come from.
Click here to read the full report.
