Mayor hopes 2010 demonstration line will be a catalyst for a downtown network
Derrick Penner
Sun
VANCOUVER I Fifty years after the city’s original streetcar network was paved over, the city has unveiled plans for the 60-day demonstration of a new streetcar line for the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics with an $8.5-million price tag.
The service, dubbed the Olympic Line (with International Olympic Committee approval), will run on streetcar units borrowed from the Brussels Transport Co. and provided under a sponsorship arrangement with Canadian transportation giant Bombardier, which is also a major sponsor of the 2010 Olympics.
It will run 1.8 kilometres, linking Granville Island and the new Canada Line’s Olympic Village station on improved existing rail lines. In introducing the demonstration plan, Mayor Sam Sullivan said it will stand as an example of accessible, sustainable transportation.
Sullivan said he hopes the test will spur creation of the long-sought downtown streetcar network and serve as a legacy of the Olympics.
“This [demonstration] will get citizens excited about rail technology,” Sullivan said, “and we have plans that ultimately the streetcar will go to the convention centre, Stanley Park and the north side of False Creek.”
Sullivan said he has lobbied Ottawa for support of the streetcar on many occasions and has reminded Premier Gordon Campbell that Campbell himself started the push for new urban streetcars when he was Vancouver‘s mayor in the 1980s.
“It was kind of a fundraising pitch,” he quipped, suggesting that it would be wise for the provincial and federal governments to sign on to “help finish the job that you started.”
The streetcar system the city has proposed hasn’t been costed out in detail, Sullivan said, but at an estimated $100 million, Vancouver would be looking for co-funders at a time when regional transportation authorities have multi-billion-dollar transportation plans in front of them.
The Olympics have been a “wonderful catalyst” for transportation innovation, according to Doug Kelsey, CEO of the TransLink subsidiary B.C. Rapid Transit Co. Ltd., which operates SkyTrain. “SkyTrain, at Expo 86 was a demonstration project,” Kelsey said, “and look at it.”
He said a Vancouver streetcar line will “have to earn its right into the overall network of regional transportation system. But [the demonstration] is a great way to start the conversation.”
Kelsey said he doesn’t view the proposed streetcar as competition to TransLink’s priorities, which include building the Evergreen rapid transit line through the TriCities, extending SkyTrain and building a new rapid transit route to the University of B.C.
For 2010, however, Dale Bracewell, Vancouver‘s director of Olympic transportation, said the city will spend $8 million replacing 1.8 km of rail track and adding a section of passing track to allow for two-way service on the line as well as improving the overhead electrical service.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which operates Granville Island, will put an additional $500,000 into the project.
Bracewell said the improved track will also serve the historical downtown streetcar that runs on weekends in tourist season.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
