Opinion: It was still the right decision to cancel Surrey-Newton Guildford LRT, even though it would’ve been built by 2024

Had the project not been cancelled and everything went as planned — without any construction delays — the highly controversial Surrey Newton-Guildford light rail transit (LRT) line would have been completed and opened in 2024.

This was the project to replace the existing 11 km-long R1 King George Boulevard RapidBus (previously known as the 96 B-Line) with an 11 km-long street-level LRT line, following the same L-shape routing along 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard between Guildford Town Centre and Newton bus exchange.

The LRT would have mirrored not only the bus route but also its station placements, with 11 stations replacing the 12 bus stops. This includes LRT’s key transfer stations at Surrey Central Station and King George Station, linking to the SkyTrain network.

Upon opening in 2024, the Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT would have been privately operated for at least seven years under a design, build, partial finance, and operations and maintenance contract. Similarly, the Canada Line SkyTrain is privately operated and maintained under a 35-year contract through the early 2040s. However, the rationale for such a similar approach with the LRT was to ensure an extended warranty and address TransLink’s lack of experience in operating such a system.

In late 2018, following a change of elected leadership at the City of Surrey, TransLink and the Mayors’ Council cancelled the $1.65-billion LRT project and immediately began to pivot their attention and resources towards building a seamless SkyTrain extension of the Expo Line on a different corridor — along Fraser Highway between King George Station and Langley City Centre. Correspondingly, the Newton-Guildford corridor along 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard went back to the drawing board for its rapid transit solution.

Just before the LRT’s cancellation, the project was set to begin procurement for a contractor in late 2018, enabling the start of construction in 2019 and its completion in 2024.

Nearly six years after the project’s cancellation, it is still clear that it was not a loss.

The shortcomings of the previous LRT project were significant and undeniable, particularly for a region that has established itself as a North American leader in rapid transit largely due to its expansion of the SkyTrain network. SkyTrain’s success is attributed to its fast, frequent, and reliable service on a fully grade-separated, driverless railway.

Reece Martin, a prominent public transit planning consultant and creator of the popular RMTransit channel on YouTube, aptly describes the Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT as merely the “railification of a bus,” noting that it offered relatively limited improvements compared to existing bus services or the enhancements that could be achieved with upgraded bus services at a significantly lower cost.

LRT was only two minutes faster than existing buses

Due to the system’s street-level design, which involved navigating through traffic intersections and adhering to local road speed limits, the LRT trains would have been limited to a maximum operating speed of 50 km/h. This street-level alignment also introduced the problematic added variable of system disruptions from vehicle collisions at street crossings, a challenge observed on similar street-level LRT lines in Calgary, Edmonton, and Seattle.

LRT’s average operating speed would have been 25 km/hr to 35 km/hr. These speeds are well below what SkyTrain is capable of on its fully grade-separated right-of-way.

The LRT’s end-to-end travel time was projected to be 27 minutes — only two minutes faster than the existing R1 RapidBus’ travel time of 29 minutes on the same route.

The LRT system also had limited long-term capacity. Initially, it would have handled just over 2,000 passengers per hour per direction (pphpd) with a fleet of 16 single-articulated 30-meter trains, each accommodating about 200 passengers. However, 2,000 pphpd is merely the existing peak hour capacity of the 99 B-Line, which saw its average ridership approach nearly 60,000 boardings just before the pandemic along its similar route length of 14 km.

Even with a fleet expansion to 32 two-car trains, the ultimate long-term capacity of the LRT would have only reached 6,000 pphpd.

In contrast, SkyTrain’s Canada Line has an ultimate long-term capacity of 15,000 pphpd (the Canada Line currently has an operating capacity of up to 8,000 pphpd as a direct result of its 2019/2020 train fleet expansion), while SkyTrain’s Expo Line and Millennium Line each have an ultimate long-term capacity of roughly 25,000 pphpd (the Expo Line currently has an operating capacity of up to roughly 15,000 PHP). A capacity of 25,000 pphpd is roughly equivalent to 28 lanes of roadway.

When the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension opens in 2027, it’s operating capacity will be increased to 7,100 pphpd, a capacity increase of 255% over the existing 99 B-Line.

In 2019, after the decision to cancel the LRT project, the pre-pandemic ridership projections for the alternative Newton-Guildford rapid transit options indicated that keeping the existing R1 RapidBus with minimal upgrades would lead to a ridership of 22,000 to 24,000 boardings by 2050. Currently, as of 2023, the R1 RapidBus is TransLink’s seventh busiest bus route, with an average of 14,600 boardings per weekday.

Upgrading the R1 RapidBus to a full Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) standard, however, could attract 40,000 to 45,000 boardings by 2050, a figure closely comparable to the 45,000 to 50,000 boardings projected for the LRT by the same year.

In essence, buses could provide the same capacity over the short- to medium-term spanning a few decades.

However, a SkyTrain and BRT combination would attract a total ridership of 55,000 to 60,000 daily riders by 2050. This entails an approximate 6 km-long southward SkyTrain extension along King George Boulevard from near King George Station to Newton bus exchange — providing future-proof long-term capacity for an all-important spine in Surrey, unlike LRT — and an approximate 4 km-long BRT corridor along 104 Avenue between Surrey Central Station and Guildford Town Centre. In 2019, this SkyTrain and BRT combination was pegged at up to $1.4 billion.

LRT’s poor standing was also reflected by its very low benefit-cost ratio (BCR) calculation of 0.69. When a BCR is greater than 1.0, it signifies that the project’s benefits exceed the economic costs. However, when a BCR is less than 1.0, the project’s costs outweigh the benefits, and it should not be considered. For a rapid transit project, the BCR takes into account a combination of factors, such as ridership and fare revenue growth, transit travel savings, auto and truck travel savings, collision cost savings, reliability, and wider economic benefits.

Contrast Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT’s poor BCR of 0.69 with the good BCRs of 1.25 for the 2009-built Canada Line — which actually increases to 1.53 if the Canada Line were delayed and completed in 2021 — as well as 1.27 for the Millennium Line’s Evergreen Extension, 1.64 for the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension to Arbutus, and 1.8 for Burnaby Mountain Gondola to Simon Fraser University’s campus.

In 2019, just before the pandemic, TransLink pegged the 16-km-long Surrey-Langley SkyTrain’s BCR at 1.24.

In early 2022, the provincial government’s economic analysis of the project took into account the pandemic’s potential impacts and revised the BCR to a range of between 0.81 and 1.31, with 1.02 being the established baseline.

The portion of the updated BCR range that is below 1.0 is based on the downside indicator if forecast ridership growth does not materialize due to the slower pace of redevelopment or continued impacts on travel behaviour due to the pandemic. But this slower activity appears highly unlikely given TransLink’s surging ridership trends in the Surrey and Langley areas — exceeding pre-pandemic volumes — and the City of Surrey, City of Langley, and Township of Langley’s plans to significantly densify the areas near the eight new stations. Surrey’s Fleetwood Plan alone, anchored by three new stations, calls for up to 100,000 new additional residents, and major redevelopment proposals are already forthcoming along the corridor.

That said, recalibrating BCRs is now essential due to rising construction costs resulting from the pandemic’s market inflationary trends. These trends pose major challenges not only for building transportation infrastructure but also for new utilities, hospitals, schools, housing, and various other projects.

LRT was based on misguided principles

Another major flaw in the previous rationale driving the LRT project was the overwhelming focus on streetscape aesthetics and its potential to spur development along the Newton-Guildford corridor, particularly within Surrey City Centre. The quality of transportation infrastructure seemed to be a distant secondary consideration.

This issue of viewing the LRT project through rose-colored glasses was particularly evident among City of Surrey officials — both elected and bureaucratic — and members of the business community. One senior City planner, serving as the municipal government’s liaison for the LRT project, even stated, “a fast train is not what we want.”

There was a belief that a SkyTrain extension’s travel speed and integration into a seamless regional network would primarily benefit Surrey residents travelling to Vancouver, as opposed to a slower train that could stimulate local life and business activity within Surrey.

But there are some major issues with such a train of thought.

Metro Vancouver has one of the smallest land areas of any major metropolitan region in Canada and the United States, and the area is even smaller when only urban zones — where development is permitted — are considered. Since residents and workers frequently cross municipal borders, which are essentially arbitrary, transportation infrastructure must be planned with a regional perspective to enhance interconnectivity. This holistic approach is also important for projects funded by regional, provincial, and national tax dollars.

When internationally renowned urban planner Alain Bertaud visited Vancouver in 2023, he shared the critical importance of reinforcing larger labour markets in a metropolitan region instead of promoting fragmented labour markets.

“If you prioritize social values, you should look at being efficient. To have a good sentiment is not enough, you have to deliver at the end. And to deliver means being efficient,” Bertaud told Daily Hive Urbanized, noting that there is a false notion that good aesthetics will automatically result in economic value.

“Otherwise, your good feelings are absolutely worthless, and they’re probably bad because they distract you from finding the real solution.”

Metro Vancouver’s 21 municipal governments — each with differing governance methods, priorities, egos, zoning regulations, and tax considerations — often act as if they are 21 separate fiefdoms. This is despite being part of a small regional area where the labour market transcends municipal borders. Municipalities should be further encouraged to collaborate across borders to maximize the region’s overall potential.

Subpar regional arterial rapid transit connections directly undermine the City of Surrey’s goal of developing Surrey City Centre into the region’s second major downtown area, as outlined in Metro Vancouver Regional District’s land use plans over the decades.

One need only consider downtown Vancouver’s connectivity strengths, which is an area well-served by public transit — including two SkyTrain lines, numerous high-capacity bus routes, the SeaBus, and the West Coast Express. This infrastructure efficiently funnels people from across the region to support the high concentration of regional-scale and quality jobs, attractions, and opportunities found in downtown Vancouver, which are supported not only by City of Vancouver residents but also by the immense regional “daytime population” that gravitates towards the city.

For example, the City of Surrey is conducting an economic impact and feasibility study for a potential 12,000-seat indoor arena, most likely to be located in Surrey City Centre. Part of the rationale for such a project is that Surrey has a growing population that can sustain such a venue and that the city is in need of such a community amenity.

However, the business case for this possible arena project would be significantly strengthened by placing the arena in close proximity to regional transportation networks so that it is accessible to both Surrey residents and a much wider pool of regional residents.

The viability of major downtown Vancouver venues such as BC Place Stadium, Rogers Arena, and the Vancouver Convention Centre relies on the region’s overall economic strength and residents’ accessibility. Stadium-Chinatown Station and Waterfront Station serve these venues well.

More broadly, when it comes to other regional considerations, good regional arterial rapid transit services are necessary to open up more housing supply opportunities as part of the multifaceted effort to address Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability woes.

With a fast-growing population, not just within car-dominant Surrey but across the region, the best way to reduce the overwhelming reliance on cars to get around efficiently is by building high-quality, fast, frequent, and reliable arterial rapid transit services. The Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT, however, did not offer a competitive advantage over existing bus services, never mind personal car driving speeds.

This is not to say that street-level LRT has no place in Metro Vancouver; it can be suitable for secondary corridors of importance. However, it is not ideal for primary corridors, such as King George Boulevard between Surrey City Centre and Newton, which need to be part of the region’s arterial backbone rapid transit network.

Saying “NO” to the LRT wasn’t a dismissal of Surrey; instead, it underscored that Surrey deserves high-quality regional transportation connections, both for its own benefit and for the benefit of the entire region.

Despite rising costs, SkyTrain remains the essential future-proof solution

Unlike Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT, the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project checks all of these boxes.

The SkyTrain travel time from Langley City Centre Station to King George Station (Surrey City Centre) will be about 22 minutes — measurably faster than the travel times of car driving, existing buses, and a Fraser Highway street-level LRT concept — while the travel time from Langley City Centre Station to Waterfront Station will be about 62 minutes. As a seamless extension of the Expo Line, it also has a capacity of 25,000 pphpd.

Average daily boardings on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension will reach 56,000 upon opening, 65,000 by 2035, and 80,000 by 2050. These projections do not account for the potential ridership gains that will result from the recent high-density, transit-oriented development area plans around the future stations along the corridor.

This is not to say that the project is without its problems. Yes, as of last week, the cost of building the Expo Line extension to Langley City Centre has increased significantly, and there will be an additional year-long wait for its opening.

However, the investment and delay are still worthwhile for a future-proof arterial rapid transit extension that integrates seamlessly into the broader regional SkyTrain network. Such projects should always be designed with a 100-year horizon in mind rather than the shorter 30- to 50-year view.

After the LRT was cancelled, TransLink redirected $1.6 billion of the LRT’s unused funding towards the 16-km-long Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project with eight new stations, which carried a preliminary cost estimate of $3.12 billion in 2019.

Up until the Government of British Columbia took over the project’s planning and implementation responsibilities, TransLink had been planning a two-phased SkyTrain extension, with an initial phase of a 7 km-long extension with four new stations reaching Fleetwood at a cost of $1.63 billion — within the budget envelope of the cancelled LRT.

The provincial government took over jurisdiction of the project in 2021, at which point a new business case showed that the cost for all 16 km to Langley City Centre, built as a single phase, had increased to $3.95 billion.

On August 15, 2024, the provincial government delivered the shocking update: the cost of the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain had risen further by 50% to $5.996 billion, based on the three finalized major contracts for building the project. Much of the increase can be attributed to the steep global inflationary trend — greatly impacting the cost of construction materials, equipment, and labour — that began in late 2021 and accelerated significantly after March 2022. As well, the project’s completion and opening date had been moved from late 2028 to late 2029.

With the contracts awarded, major construction work on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain is guaranteed to begin in Fall 2024.

While the recent escalation in costs for new transportation infrastructure, sewage treatment plants, utilities, hospitals, schools, and other major public sector projects is a significant concern, it takes real political courage to resist the urge to downsize and reduce scope in a shortsighted effort to cut initial construction costs and to avoid political and public backlash, especially ahead of a provincial election. The current BC NDP-led provincial government deserves some commendation for this, as they could have easily reverted the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain to a multi-phased extension project or even reduced its scope to the long-term detriment of public transit that moves people efficiently and attracts riders.

In contrast, just look at how the City of Calgary and the United Conservative-led Alberta provincial government have botched and mishandled the Green Line LRT project.

Calgary’s new Green Line LRT was originally planned as an 18 km-long route across the city, with 13 stations primarily running along street level, a 2 km-long tunnel for the approach into downtown Calgary, and a 1 km-long elevated guideway segment. Before the pandemic, the project had a preliminary cost estimate of roughly $4.6 billion, and as recently as 2023, it was pegged at $5.5 billion.

In late July 2024, due to further cost escalation, the Green Line LRT’s scope was significantly shortened to a 10 km route and scaled back with just seven stations — approximately half the original route length and nearly half the number of stations. And even after scaling back the project so significantly, it will still cost even more to build: $6.2 billion.

Paying more and receiving less in return is a tough blow.

Clearly, street-level LRT projects are not necessarily cheaper to build than fully grade-separated and fully automated systems like SkyTrain.

Also, the resulting downsized Green Line LRT project is now projected to see an average of 32,000 boardings upon opening — a decrease of 42% compared to the previous design’s 55,000 daily boardings. This sets Calgary’s public transit ambitions back by decades.

The Surrey-Langley SkyTrain and the Green Line LRT were not the only major Canadian public transit projects to have their budgets revised this summer to account for rising costs.

The future Ontario Line — spearheaded by the Progressive Conservative-led Ontario provincial government — will be a real game changer for Toronto’s public transit network. This is a 16 km-long standalone line with 15 stations, providing a much-needed relief line to reach downtown Toronto from the suburban communities. This fully driverless system is modelled directly after Vancouver’s successful automated SkyTrain technology, and it is also a public-private project, adopting a similar financing and operational model to the Canada Line, which was Canada’s first public-private transit project and is widely considered a major success. Like the Canada Line, the private sector contractor will operate, maintain, and partially finance the Ontario Line for 30 years.

Before the pandemic, the Ontario Line’s cost was pegged at about $11 billion. By 2022, that figured increased to up to $19 billion, which includes not only the cost of construction, but the 30-year concession agreement for financing, operating, and maintaining the system.

In late June 2024, it was revealed that the total construction, financing, operating, and maintenance costs had grown to $27 billion. Due to market conditions, contract awards for construction and equipment cost much more than previously anticipated, with the cost to design and build the southern stations and tunnels alone reaching $6 billion, the northern tunnels reaching $4 billion, and the automated train control, platform screen door, electrical, and track systems and the procurement of a large train fleet reaching $9 billion.

Overall, the Ontario Line will entail 3 km of elevated guideway, 9 km of tunnel, and 4 km of at-grade guideway by sharing the Go Train corridor. There will be six elevated stations, eight underground stations, and one at-grade station.

Construction on the Ontario Line is already well underway, with about $5 billion already spent as of early 2024. It is expected to reach completion and open in 2031, attracting up to 388,000 boardings per day upon opening and carrying an ultimate long-term capacity of 34,000 pphpd. With the use of full automation, Ontario Line trains will reach SkyTrain’s maximum regular frequency of every 90 seconds during peak periods.

In Metro Vancouver, a significant amount of time and money is lost in repeatedly debating and reassessing the suitability of SkyTrain, while resources are expended evaluating on other modes such as BRT and LRT. There should be no doubt that expanding the SkyTrain network is the clear path forward for obvious primary corridors that need to be a part of the region’s arterial backbone rapid transit network.

Let us not forget that, in the post-pandemic era, the SkyTrain network boasts some of the highest ridership levels among fully grade-separated subway systems in Canada and the United States, rivalling even the major networks of the Washington DC Metro, Chicago L, and the Boston subway.

SkyTrain also has a ridership that is multitudes higher than the often-touted street-level Portland MAX LRT. Before the pandemic, the MAX LRT had an average ridership of about 120,000 boardings per day on about 97 km of track and nearly 100 stations. As of early 2024, MAX LRT’s ridership is just 63,000 per day.

In contrast, before the pandemic, all three SkyTrain lines — a total length of nearly 80 km with 53 stations — had a combined total ridership of approximately 513,000 boardings per day on average. As of 2023, following a strong ridership recovery to date, the SkyTrain network sees 430,000 boardings per day on average.

It should also be noted that the Portland and Vancouver regions are comparable in both population and economic capacity. The competitive advantages of SkyTrain have helped the system recover from the effects of the pandemic.

Extending the SkyTrain network to support the region’s growing population and economy is as crucial and self-evident as increasing housing supply to tackle our housing affordability crisis effectively.

Build it sooner than later

It is now abundantly clear that the longer we wait, the more expensive these projects will get.

As well, public support for advancing major rapid transit projects has never been higher in Metro Vancouver.

Ahead of the October 2024 provincial election, British Columbia’s political parties should be urged to commit to undergoing an unprecedented simultaneous expansion of Metro Vancouver’s arterial backbone rapid transit network — SkyTrain.

This would be in addition to the ongoing construction project of the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension to Arbutus, as well as the forthcoming work on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain. Both of these projects only achieve the bare minimum of completing expansions that should have been built years ago.

That means that over the next 10 to 15 years, by 2040, there should be expedited projects to build the 7 km-long SkyTrain Millennium Line extension from Arbutus to the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) campus in Vancouver, the new 20 km-long North Shore SkyTrain line between Park Royal in West Vancouver and Metrotown in Burnaby via the Second Narrows (with a new replacement phased Ironworkers Memorial Bridge crossing), and the 6 km-long SkyTrain Expo Line extension along King George Boulevard from Surrey City Centre to Newton. All three projects provide a long-term solution for primary corridors of regional importance.

There should also be investments in some new RapidBus routes and BRT lines on secondary corridors of importance and the construction of the new gondola line to reach Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Burnaby Mountain campus.

Creative ways of achieving such outcomes should also be explored, including potential public-private partnerships for standalone services such as the North Shore SkyTrain and SFU gondola, given the barrier of high input costs.

Over the last few years, the provincial government is already in the process of entering the detailed planning and business case development step for the UBC SkyTrain extension, and through its own initiative it also proactively performed a high-level feasibility study exploring potential North Shore SkyTrain routes.

With the provincial government holding the big purse strings required to advance major transportation expansion projects in Metro Vancouver, it needs to take a much more proactive top-down role in outlining a long-term transportation vision that is more ambitious than what TransLink administration and TransLink’s Mayors’ Council intend to do. TransLink’s current focus on the unambitious scope of BRT amounts to the organization’s lack of confidence in its capacity to deliver.

Canada’s two largest urban centres of Greater Toronto and Greater Montreal are currently undergoing a public transit renaissance, with Ontario’s provincial government leading not only the Ontario Line but other projects, such as the 10-year $60+ billion Go Train expansion, and Quebec’s provincial government working with the private sector to build and operate the 67 km-long fully automated REM commuter rail network, which is also directly inspired by Vancouver’s success with SkyTrain — especially the Canada Line.

The idea of what would later become REM was first conceived in 2014, and major construction work began in April 2018. The first phase opened in July 2023, and the final phase is on track to reach completion and open in 2027. Altogether, achieving REM — comparable to the length of SkyTrain’s existing Expo, Millennium, and Canada lines combined — is on track to take only about 13 years from early visioning to the ribbon cutting of the final phase reaching Montreal-Trudeau International Airport in 2027.

While the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension and Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extensions combined (22 km) are significant for the Vancouver region — pushing the total length of the SkyTrain network to just beyond 100 km — they pale in comparison to the multiple network-sized major projects being built in the Toronto and Montreal regions. Toronto also has multiple other subway and rail projects in the works in addition to the Ontario Line.

But before all of this, the provincial government also needs to conduct a thorough analysis and examine honestly how to better control skyrocketing project costs without sacrificing project scopes, including looking at its procurement strategies and requirements.

As well, while the pandemic has certainly led to a market inflation in the cost for construction materials, labour, and equipment, and the cost of land acquisition has also risen, there is a growing consensus behind the scenes that the “soft costs” for public sector projects are now proportionally much larger than before the pandemic — an extra thick layer of major project costs before shovels even hit the ground. This phenomenon is not exclusive to BC but also other Canadian jurisdictions on the provincial, regional, and municipal government levels and for public transit authorities — not just for building transportation infrastructure but also for hospitals, schools, utilities, and public housing.

Previous “Make Work” project templates that focus on frontline construction workers have now problematically become “Make Consult” projects, with an over-bloated number of project consultants, managers, coordinators, and engineers.

All the while, the provincial government also needs to fix some of the structural issues with TransLink’s financial ability to cover its own operations and maintenance costs, and certain capital costs.

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