Canada's $6BN Railway U-Turn

You're in charge of transport for a metropolitan region that's in desperate need of a huge upgrade.What do you build?Well, a train line, obviously.And with that decision made, what kind of train line do you decide to build?A, a SkyTrain on elevated guideways or B, a ground -level light rail system?The SkyTrain would glide over the street -level chaos below, while a light rail system could create walkable cities and require just a fraction of the infrastructure.

This is the debate that Greater Vancouver has been grappling with for more than a decade.And while $6 billion is currently being spent building a SkyTrain from Surrey out to Langley, did they make the right choice?The original plan to build an LRT came at a third of the cost and would have offered an alternate route through one of the fastest -growing areas in all of Canada.But late in the day, Surrey's former mayor Doug McCallum and the City Council scrapped the project and replaced it with a SkyTrain.The project they scrapped, provided there were no delays, which granted would have been miraculous, would have seen the LRT open in 2024.Now in the midst of a busy construction zone, the debate is still not settled.

Is the Vancouver Skytrain really worth spending triple the original budget?Along the west coast of British Columbia, you'll find one of the most famous regions in the whole of Canada.Spanning nearly 3 ,000 square kilometres, it's home to the city of Vancouver.And even if you haven't been here before, you'll definitely have seen it.But head south from the Hollywood of the North, across the Fraser River, and you'll find Surrey and Langley, two of the fastest growing areas in the country.So fast growing, in fact, that while Vancouver is the most widely recognised city in British Columbia, Surrey and Langley are starting to climb out from under its shadow.

Population growth in the province may seem to be stagnating, but these suburbs are bucking the trend.More than 400 ,000 people are set to move here over the next 30 years to take advantage of the cheaper housing market.But the speed of growth is already causing problems.As the suburbs change, infrastructure is struggling to keep up.

The bottom line is the jobs are migrating, like most North American metropolitan communities, away from a nodal centre to a much more distributed system.

And you really need a distributed transit system if that's going to be the case.So the trouble is, while people may be rushing to live in the area, once they get there, getting around is pretty tricky and transport is pretty heavily reliant on cars.So to avoid falling into the Toronto trap of sprawling suburbs and a lack of investment in public infrastructure, British Columbia is making some moves.Enter the Surrey Langley LRT.Sorry, wrong one.The Surrey Langley Skytrain.

fall in love with construction.And a big part of that is the graphics we create, whether it's to illustrate how vortex shedding works or even what the White House looks like in sight.And it takes a pretty hefty processor to pull it all off.Which is why we turned to AMD for help.If a processor acts a bit like the brain of a computer, then the AMD Threadripper Pro is basically Einstein.Just without the crazy hair.

Thanks to its 96 cores, 192 threads and 384MB L3 cache it can handle anything we throw at it.At any one moment our editors could be creating an in -depth model of the line, editing a video on a Vancouver Skytrain and obviously listening to the world's best construction podcasts.And yet I can't remember the last time they complained to me about screen freezes and pesky reboots.To upgrade your team's processing power today, it really is worth going to take a look at the AMD Threadripper Pro, either via the link below or by scanning the QR code on screen.Now, whenever you guys take the time to go and check out one of our video sponsors, it massively helps us out here at The B1M, and checking out AMD really could help out your project team too.Speaking of graphics, we need to show you how Vancouver's Skytrain extension is being constructed.

Connecting to the pre -existing Expo Line and therefore onto the Millennium Line and future Broadway Subway, the SkyTrain will carve out a route stretching for 16 kilometres through the heart of the city.This new line will create links from Langley in the south towards Burnaby, Richmond and Vancouver in the north.Well, eventually.Because first, it's got to be built.To create space for the new guideways, major roads like Fraser Highway are being widened in sections.Built high above street level, elevated guideways avoid the congestion down below and negate the need for any tunnelling work that would require big and expensive roads.

boring machines.The first step to building a guideway is the piles, deep holes ready for the load -bearing columns that support the overall structure.They're driven into the ground, ranging in depth from 10 to 100 metres.Certain areas of the Surrey -Langley route cut through floodplains and so deeper piles are needed to offer stability in soft soil.Once the pile holes are excavated, concrete columns, i .e.

the piles themselves, are constructed within them.And this route features more than 480 piles, created with a steel rebar cage inside them for reinforcement and a formwork mould to hold the concrete in place.They effectively act as legs for the more than 4 ,400 precast segments, which are lifted into place by a machine called a launching gantry.This nifty piece of kit sits on wheels and is manoeuvred by a hydraulic system that positions the segments into place and forms the actual guideway.The segments are bound together using threaded steel cables and epoxy, which is a bit like superglue on steroids.And once those blocks are tightened, they become what's known as a span, giving you at that point something akin to a Skytrain guideway.

But while the construction journey began in late 2024, the actual process of building almost looked very different.As I mentioned earlier, this wasn't originally planned as an elevated railway.When it was first put forward back in 2012, the idea was for a light rail system, kind of like a tram.The Surrey LRT would have had 11 stations along its two -pronged 10 .5 -kilometre route and construction work was due to start in 2019.But just a year before work started on site, the project was cancelled.Doug McCallum, who campaigned to replace the plan with the SkyTrain extension, was elected mayor in 2018.

He claimed the LRT would have been slower, offered lower capacity, and could increase congestion on the roads.And while he gained a lot of public support, he was elected after all, the new SkyTrain plan has divided opinion.

There's still quite a lot of political support for that kind of system in North America, which I find rather frustrating, especially in a period of time where the claim is austerity, austerity, austerity.The extension of the SkyTrain system out to Langley was originally a whole different animal which was going to be our region's first modern, what I call European -style, tram system.

So, let's break it down officially.SkyTrain versus LRT, beginning with the most obvious metric.

Show me the money.

The first phase of the Surrey LRT was set to cost about CAD $1 .65 billion in 2018.Even when accounting for the less developed follow -up phase to the LRT plan and adjusting for inflation, today that would be about CAD $5BN.That's cheaper than the $6BN set out for the SkyTrain project.Now, it's worth mentioning that the SkyTrain was originally predicted to cost around CAD $3 -4BN, but as any regular viewer of the B1M will know, early estimates for big infrastructure projects should kind of be taken with a pinch of salt.But we'll give the first point to the LRT.The second major difference is where the

train will actually go.Looking at the LRT, the initial phases would have cut through Surrey in the shape of an L, creating two corridors for travel.Now that's great for the residents of Surrey.Even though the route was only 10 .5 kilometres, it featured three more stations than the longer SkyTrain.Like many European cities, Surrey could have become a lot more walkable, easing their reliance on cars.The problem is that it doesn't exactly help the people of Langley and Langley Township all the way down here.

The SkyTrain, on the other hand, would be 5 .5 kilometres longer, stretching through all three districts.So, while its stations are spread further apart, it'll collect two more people and onto the Expo Line towards the city of Vancouver.But we're going to give a point to both options here because there were less substantiated plans to extend the LRT down to Langley at a later date.Then we come to construction.Put simply, engineering an LRT is a lot faster and generally easier.It's built at street level, using existing road infrastructure, although that includes signalling, road rebuilds, traffic redesign, electrical systems and moving utilities.

That's compared to the SkyTrain, which requires tons and tons of concrete to create hundreds of columns before you've even laid any track.And all of that requires long -term monitoring and maintenance, which doesn't exactly come cheap.So 3 -1 to the LRT.The next point is awarded for operation.You see, while all of those concrete columns that are needed to support the SkyTrain's elevated guideways are expensive and time -consuming to build, they come with massive benefits.The LRT is at street level, meaning it has to adhere to the rules of the road.

We're talking about traffic lights, cars and pedestrians wandering about.The SkyTrain will be several metres above the road, avoiding any of the chaos down below, which means two things.It should be safer and a lot faster.For comparison, Toronto recently opened the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, which, when at street level, can travel at up to 60 kilometres per hour.The SkyTrain could move at 80 kilometres an hour without stopping at lights or intersections.It means that travelling from King George Station at one end of the line to Langley at the opposite end could take just 22 minutes.

The SkyTrain cars would be much bigger and driverless.offering more trains per hour for more passengers.This is an easy point to the SkyTrain.And the final point, making it three all, goes to the SkyTrain for convenience.If you've been to Vancouver, you'll know that a SkyTrain already exists.It's called the Expo Line.

And as I briefly mentioned, the Surrey -Langley route will act as an extension of that pre -existing infrastructure.

They're hooking it up to the end of the previous line which was built in anticipation of eventually being extended so that the track extends beyond the last station a little bit.

As we've seen, the Skytrain costs a lot more money and takes a serious amount of work to build.but it should offer a lot more passenger capacity and a faster service.Making these massive decisions that are going to impact people for generations to come is never black and white and sometimes the arguments around them can drag on for decades while people in the city continue to struggle.Vancouverhas avoided that trap.As you're watching this video, work is continuing on the new line and its stations with a planned opening date in 2029.

But while it's going to offer a fresh travel option for residents of this growing metropolitan area, the development will stretch far beyond the tracks.

It dramatically elevates the value of the land within that short two -minute walk compass from the station enormously.So land speculation is a huge business here among people who are smart enough to get in there early enough to put their claim in on the land.There's huge profits to be made.

Eight new stations are being constructed for the Surrey -Langley SkyTrain extension.and each has the potential to become a commuter hub servicing thousands of people a week.Now, as you'd expect, this is great news for shops, hotels and bars nearby who are looking to take advantage of increased footfall.But it's the housing developers who stand to make the big bucks.Thanks to this convenient new travel stop, the cost of land anywhere near these stations tends to shoot upwards, which is either excellent or terrible depending on your situation.On the one hand, homeowners in the area will likely increase their house value without having to do anything.

But on the other hand, properties become a whole lot more expensive, pricing potential buyers and renters out of the market.And it's the perfect opportunity for stealthy developers in what's called a land grab.The early bird moves in quickly to buy a worm at a reasonable price.Then it sells the worm for a premium once the station is constructed and the land value has increased.But it doesn't have to be this way.Hong Kong has a very different story.

There, the state basically owns all the land.So when the MTR Corporation, Mass Transit Railway, builds a new line or train station, the government grants development rights for the surrounding land before prices skyrocket.Once the new train hub is constructed, that land becomes more valuable, MTR can partner with private developers to build offices, malls, houses, or whatever they like.The MTR then takes a slice of the profits made by the developer, whether that's a lump sum or a percentage of the commercial gains from the properties.It's known as a rail -plus -property model and it basically means that transit pays for itself without the need for massive taxpayer subsidies.But in Vancouver and most Western countries, developers can basically have assets, meaning land profits fall into private hands.

It goes to show that projects like this are about a whole lot more than just where a train line operates.Where that line runs can dramatically increase land value and transform entire areas.And so in 10, 20 or even 30 years' time, once these stations are no longer new, the face of Surrey could look entirely different.We couldn't come to a decision on whether an LRT or a SkyTrain was best.But in decades to come, will people look back and regret that it wasn't an LRT?Well, maybe, but probably not.

Almost every big transit project faces a lot of scrutiny when it's going through the planning and construction part of its journey.What matters is that it's happening.Come 2029, Greater Vancouverwill have a new SkyTrain to help connect its people.And we can't wait to see it arrive.This video was sponsored by AMD.

Don't forget that you guys can go and check out the AMD Threadripper Pro by clicking the link below or scanning the QR code on screen.And as always guys, if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction, make sure you're subscribed to The B1M.