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| Map of Surrey-Langley SkyTrain Extension. Select to enlarge. |
Over the last few days, there have been a few media articles and press releases about Surrey-Langley SkyTrain Project delays. These articles and releases premise a completion date of 2025 for the whole project from King George to Downtown Langley.
In January 2020, TransLink released the phase one business case for the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project. Phase one would have the SkyTrain terminate in Fleetwood.
In the business case, it states, "the anticipated opening date for passenger service on this first stage [to Fleetwood] is late 2025."
Since the release of the original business case, there was a provincial election. The NDP promised to build and help fund the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project as one phase to Downtown Langley.
The 2021 provincial budget reserved room to fund the SkyTrain extension fully to Downtown Langley. The provincial government is also now responsible for getting the project built.
On July 9th, the federal government also announced $1.3 billion in additional funding to build the project to Downtown Langley.
Because TransLink staff only completed the detailed design work and business case to get to Fleetwood, now provincial staff are working on completing the business case and detailed design work to build the project as one phase to Downtown Langley.
The increased scope of the project (building to Downtown Langley) and a possible new Operations and Maintenace Centre near the Langley terminus, as per the latest TransLink board report, means that 2025 was never going to be the date for SkyTrain to get to Langley City.
I understand that a new business case is almost now complete, so this winter/spring, I expect the province to launch a request for proposal for the entire project. Because of the project's complexity, I would expect the province to announce a successful tender at the end of 2022, with construction ramping up in 2023 over the next four years. It took about four years to build the Canada Line.
While it may seem that there has been a significant delay in getting SkyTrain to Langley City, it is not the case. From what I've seen, things are full-steam ahead.
3 comments:
I see the the city council is quite exited to see this development. With an aging population that will not take kindly to a lot of the disruption that will inevitably occur, It will be interesting to see if any council will be around at the end.
I still don't understand why it isn't running along the freeway. Great density in the area between 200th and 208th north of 72nd Ave and growing very rapidly, especially with the introduction of the Towers Latimer Heights development along 200th. Very young community there, new families renting townhouses and condos, many foreign exchange students living there and making use of the Langley/Carvolth exchange to get to and from BCIT, SFU, Trinity Western, etc. People coming in from Vancouver and surrounding area to attend games at the Langley Events Centre. Lots of growing young families in Walnut Grove too. Half an hour to get to downtown Vancouver. Guess it's too late for that. Can't figure out why downtown Langley. Because of the casino?
There are more people and businesses along the Fraser Highway corridor, and it end in the Langley Regional Town Centre which include Willowbrook which is in the Township and Downtown Langley City.
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