How modular housing could speed up construction of much-needed homes

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Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Lee Haber, who is an urban and transportation planner and the director of strategy and partnerships at Mountain Valley Express, a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring world-class regional rail to the South Coast of British Columbia. Last year, Vancouver City Council decided to prioritize future rapid transit planning on the Hastings Street corridor ahead of the 41st Avenue/49th Avenue corridor. While this may seem like semantics, given that both projects are many years away from happening, it actually makes a lot of sense for a reason they likely did not anticipate. Though the Hastings Street corridor already has many major destinations, such as Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Hastings Park/PNE, it is served by some of TransLink’s busiest bus routes, and the corridor does see traffic congestion. It should also be noted that Hastings Park/PNE will grow as a regional entertainment destination through the completion of the new PNE amphitheatre venue and the PNE’s planned redevelopment and expansion of Playland into a theme park. However, this is not the main reason it should be the next SkyTrain route within Vancouver after SkyTrain Millennium Line’s extension to the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. Instead, there are several key technical reasons why SkyTrain along Hastings Street between downtown Vancouver and North Burnaby’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood should be prioritized and is the key to unlocking the next wave of SkyTrain network expansion in Metro Vancouver. Much ado “aBIRT” nothing? In recent years, much attention has been given to how SkyTrain or rapid transit should serve the North Shore. Several studies have been conducted and support seems to be coalescing around Burrard Inlet Rapid Transit (BIRT), also commonly referred to as the “Purple Line” — the rapid transit route between Park Royal in West Vancouver and Metrotown in Burnaby via the Second Narrows, with major stops such as Lonsdale, Phibbs Exchange, Hastings Park/PNE, Brentwood Town Centre, and the BC Institute of Technology (BCIT) Burnaby campus. All of this is for good reason: the North Shore has been waiting for SkyTrain for decades, and such a full grade-separated and automated rapid transit solution would likely generate high levels of ridership. Burrard Inlet Rapid Transit concepts of two North Shore SkyTrain lines via the Second Narrows: Gold Line from Park Royal to downtown Vancouver via Hastings, and Purple Line from Park Royal to Brentwood Town Centre Station and Metrotown Station via Willingdon Avenue. (North Shore Connects) However, despite the strong case for the Purple Line, there is an enormous challenge to building it that goes beyond finding a corridor through Lonsdale or crossing the Second Narrows. Rail transit systems also require a large parcel of land (often over six hectares) somewhere adjacent to the line for an operations and maintenance centre (OMC), which entails a large train storage yard and maintenance facilities for both the train fleet and the many kilometres of rail. SkyTrain’s existing OMCs entail the main original facility of OMC1 in the Edmonds area of Burnaby, which serves the Expo and Millennium lines, and the Bridgeport OMC in North Richmond, which separately serves the Canada Line. There is also a small OMC3 facility on the Millennium Line’s Evergreen extension just east of Inlet Centre Station. Summer 2022 construction progress in Burnaby’s Edmonds area on the new SkyTrain control centre building at OMC2 (left) and upgrades on OMC1 (right) to handle the future Mark V cars. (TransLink) Currently, TransLink is constructing a new major additional OMC near Braid Station at a cost of $383 million, and planning is underway on a future additional OMC within the North Cloverdale area next to SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension. If one looks at the planned BIRT route from Park Royal to Metrotown, it becomes clear that there really isn’t any suitable site along the corridor for building such a facility. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would likely be prohibitively expensive. Though the Purple Line alignment lacks suitable maintenance facility sites, this does not apply to the Hastings Street corridor. In fact, there is plenty of vacant land located on the Old Shellburn Site just north of Kensington Mall in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of North Burnaby that could accommodate such a facility. A potential OMC Site at the Shellburn Distribution Terminal Site in relation to rapid transit along Hastings Street. (Lee Haber) BIRT SkyTrain interlined with a Hastings SkyTrain. (Lee Haber) Since a SkyTrain line along Hastings Street would easily interline with BIRT, such a maintenance facility could easily serve both lines. Such a move would save both projects at least hundreds of millions of dollars and accelerate their progress. It seems like if we want SkyTrain to the North Shore sooner, the best thing we can do is prioritize a subway along Hastings Streets between downtown Vancouver and Capitol Hill. Reducing the cost by thinking regionally Our goal shouldn’t be to just build BIRT, a Hastings Subway, or any specific project; our focus should be assembling an entire regional transit network with each project serving as a piece of that network. Using transit should be a seamless experience with easy and convenient transfers between bus, SkyTrain, and regional rail (express trains that reach 160 km/hr). By designing and building with the network in mind, we can maximize ridership, save billions of dollars and build the kind of comprehensive transit network our rapidly growing region desperately needs. An example