Former BC premier pushing for SkyTrain to UBC
Posted March 15, 2017 10:04 pm.
Last Updated March 15, 2017 10:55 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Expect to hear a lot more talk about running the SkyTrain all the way to the University of British Columbia.
Mike Harcourt, former BC premier and Vancouver mayor, plans to push the idea during a public lecture with current Mayor Gregor Robertson Thursday.
Harcourt is challenging planners and decision makers to take on a bold vision to help with Vancouver’s incoming population.
“There are another 2 million people who are going to be moving here in the next 40 years,” he says.
Harcourt is pitching the idea of building up the Millennium Line and an express subway to Coquitlam’s United Boulevard.
“The express train could be out to the Jericho Lands [in West Point Grey] and build into that development and then extend the Millennium Line all the way out to UBC, the East Mall.”
He suggests charging development fees around the stations to pay for the estimated $50 million dollar cost of each stop.
“Works extremely well on Manhattan Island where they’ve got 5,000,000 people. They have two express trains and two local, so we could do the same thing.”
Harcourt says there needs to be some big thinking to accommodate a projected 150,000 new people moving to the Broadway corridor over the next few years between Main and Burrard, and 100,000 or more west of Alma.
“I think it’s really important not to under build.”
Harcourt says he has been speaking with people from UBC, the City of Vancouver, TransLink, Metro Vancouver and Musqueam First Nation about his idea.
Under the current plan, TransLink will expand the Millennium Line just as far as Arbutus Street.
