Built for Expo ’86 as a working showcase of its theme “Transportation and Communication”, Vancouver’s SkyTrain light rail transit system is arguably the fair’s longest lasting legacy. Twenty-two years on, the system processes nearly 200,000 people shuttling between its 33 stations every day, while its 49.5km of track make it the longest LRT system in the world.
The network was expanded in 2002 to include the neighbouring city of Burnaby with a second line, the 20.3km Millennium Line, and construction is currently underway on a third, the Canada Line, which will connect the system to the Vancouver International Airport and is slated for completion in 2009.
A homeless man patrols the eastbound lanes of the Lougheed Highway under a Skytrain viaduct. His sign reads “Sleeping on Street, Please Spare $3”, and might as well have been invisible for the ten or so minutes I watched.
Onboard the SkyTrain as it pulls away from Brentwood station.
An aging MKI train, distinguished by its boxy design and red trim, banks into a station. The system still has 150 MKI cars in operation, many of them dating from the 1980s.
A passenger shields his eyes from ceiling-splayed shafts of afternoon sun.
For much of its loop, the Millennium Line travels through the derelict industrial areas that separate Burnaby’s far-flung neighbourhoods. Here, the elevated line runs parallel to two levels of standard-gauge rail track.
Crossing paths with a newer MKII train.
Blown lights in the Columbia station tunnel.
Plucked straight from a modernist nightmare, concrete median columns separate eastbound and westbound lanes of the Lougheed Highway.
Feathered spectators watch from atop a power pole.
A MKII train crosses the Fraser River on the Skybridge. At 616m from end to end, the Skybridge is the world’s longest transit-only bridge.
