SkyTrain-oriented development at Suter Brook, Port Moody, October 2016
Burnaby’s “City of Lougheed” project, captured from a real estate site. The Evergreen Line enters from the right to join the existing Millennium Line.
Metro Vancouver’s Evergreen rapid transit line is set to open before the end of 2016. Planning for this SkyTrain link to deep Coquitlam started almost 20 years ago, and residential towers sprang up almost immediately near the proposed route, beginning with Newport and Suter Brook in Port Moody. The Coquitlam Centre precinct was rapidly densified and complexified through the 2000s. We recently saw the astonishing announcement of a 23-tower project at Lougheed Town Centre site in Burnaby, rising to heights of 65 storeys, with a potential for 11,000 apartment units. And it ain’t over yet.
SkyTrain is reliable in moving masses of people, but its land use impacts over the past 30 years have been uneven. This website supports urban development that gives walkable access to services in a healthy, attractive setting, and fosters a sense of local attachment. By that standard, the manufactured townsite of Suter Brook, pictured above, may be good enough: it offers commercial services and cafes, housing choice in the adjacent Klahanie neighbourhood, and scenic walking trails. The Joyce/Collingwood development in Vancouver has been an area of conscious community building; Surrey Centre boasts a grand but so far disconnected set of civic monuments. The towers of Burnaby’s Brentwood are jammed into a web of major highways, rapid transit lines and parking lots, and I find it hard to believe that Brentwood will ever be classified as a community.
Tower construction in Burnaby below Burquitlam Station, October 2016
I mentioned in a January 2016 post that at-grade trains are slower than SkyTrain, but are more likely to enable medium-density living and neighbourhood-scale commercial use. Skytrain flies over or tunnels under neighbourhoods, and leaves large areas of sprawl unimproved. A pro-SkyTrain reader responded that land use is controlled by city councils, and they could locate modest-size villages around SkyTrain stations if they chose. However, they have not yet done so, in any of the seven cities that are home to existing or prospective elevated train stations.
I took a sometimes gritty walk recently through communities that are directly affected by the Evergreen line. I was joined by two co-tourists, my sister Morna McLeod and my brother Brian McLeod. There are seven stations along the route, and transit-oriented towers have already popped up at five of them. The sixth station area, in the historic Port Moody city centre, is the subject of a long-term plan that is intended to introduce towers. The seventh station, Coquitlam Central, is surrounded by the largest bus exchange in the Fraseropolis region.
The pedestrian ambience along the walking route proposed by Google is often unpleasant. Vehicle traffic is fast and noisy, especially on the 55-minute downhill stretch between Burquitlam and Moody Centre. We veered off onto side streets as much as possible. At the bottom of one forest path we hopped down onto the overgrown site of the old Barnet Hotel, considered and then rejected for use as a SkyTrain station. Digging and constructing, as expected, is concentrated near the almost-completed transit stations.
One aspect of the current transition on the City of Coquitlam side of the Burquitlam station area is the destruction of affordable rental housing. We noted the same trend in a post earlier this year about Burnaby’s Metrotown precinct. It’s sometimes argued that the walkup apartments built in the 1950s and 1960s are reaching the end of their useful life. Whether or not this is true, there is no plan to house the tenants after eviction. The wrecking of affordable housing is contributing to an acute homelessness problem across the region.
[Additional link, November 7 2016: a one-minute Evergreen Line video lists the stations along the route.]
Demolition of affordable rental housing on Foster Avenue, Coquitlam, near Burquitlam station
Three-tower excavation on Foster Ave., October 2016
Vintage commercial structure beside new construction, west of Moody Centre station
Excavation west of Moody Centre station, October 2016
New residences built in anticipation of Skytrain with faux-vintage laneway commercial behind, Moody Centre
Moody Centre SkyTrain station with Klahanie towers behind
10-year-old townhome development in Klahanie, walkable to either Moody Centre or Inlet stations
1980s (pre-SkyTrain) apartments on the northern edge of the Coquitlam town centre
Just west of Coquitlam City Hall and Lafarge Lake station
End of the line at Lafarge Lake, behind the Evergreen Cultural Centre
Fraseropolis 
I was going to comment on the demolition of rental stock, but I see that ‘Rico’ has already made the point on your Metrotown article exactly as I would have made here. Instead I will simply note that the project at Foster and North Road (I guess this is what you are referring to) will replace 110 units with almost 900 units (smaller size on average, but still, a lot more sq. ft). Overall, you would expect this project to result in lower housing costs (due to standard supply and demand) – albeit that doesn’t help the people directly affected.
Personally, my family does plan to make use of the new skytrain line once it is built. If it had been built at-grade as LRT it would be completely useless to us. The areas around Skytrain can be made into nice areas if municipal planning is good enough. No power in the world can make an at-grade transit system anywhere near as functional as skytrain in getting people from place to place.
An aside, have you ever considered reviewing Osprey Village – considering what it is and where it is, I find it quite well executed.
Thanks for that comment. Factually, everything you’ve written is accurate.
On the Foster at North Road housing, as with Metrotown, we’re replacing rental housing for low and moderate income people with condo apartments for purchase, with at least some of that destined for a purely speculative market. As I’ve noted elsewhere on this site, there is little incentive or requirement in the Lower Mainland for developers to construct new rental housing, except very recently in Vancouver where the city council is beginning to insist on the inclusion of rental units in major developments. This is an example that could be followed elsewhere. I’ve also noted that Metro Vancouver and a coalition of interests called on the federal government in 2010 to restore the 1970s-era tax credit for rental housing construction, but there has been no action to date.
I agree that the Evergreen Line will bring benefits of all kinds to people and businesses in Burnaby and the Tri-Cities. I agree that municipal governments have extensive powers over land use and urban design. Some past examples of Skytrain oriented development, especially on the Expo Line, have been pretty grim, but local governments are getting better at managing this challenge.
I hope to do a post on Pitt Meadows fairly soon. I’ll include a mention of Osprey but I’m more interested in the uptown development.