The Mark V is the future of transportation in Metro Vancouver
SkyTrain Mark V arriving at the station
Sorry for the lack of posts for the past while. I have been unbelievably busy. Enjoy this new blog format!
I had the fortunate luck to catch a brand new Mark V over the weekend and I have a lot of thoughts on why this train is good and why we’re sort of at the end of Expo Line expansion. Overall the train is really good and iterates well on four decades of experience by local transit officials.
Since then, some thoughts have been percolating in my head over what these trains mean and what I think the future holds for the SkyTrain system as a whole.
Interior of a Mark V showing the next station
The Mark V came into service last week here in Vancouver. What makes them special is not the LED displays which show all sorts of useful information nor the wonderful indigenous art laminating the glass dividers between the doors, but it is the length of the trains.
Train interior looking outside showing the train at the very edge of the platform
These trains now occupy the full length of the platforms on the Expo and Millennium Line. Getting to this point has taken 40 years since the opening of original Expo Line, which tells you a lot about how forward thinking we were thinking with everything then—I wish the same could be said for the Canada Line, but that is a whole different topic.
When I made an appearance on Gareth Dennis’ podcast, Railnatter, I pointed out that the Expo Line once the new extension is completed will put it at just six kilometres short of the Northern Line in London (58 KM compared to Expo’s future 52), to which he had a bit of a negative reaction to.
His reaction was right because it’s actually the city’s busiest line. I’ve had the ‘joy’ to use the Northern Line while working in London and it’s not a pleasure to be on. There is no real alternative to the line when it’s busy and many of the stations are either really crampt with narrow platforms or have interchanges that will test your claustrophobia—try Bank between 4 and 7 PM on a weekday and you’ll quickly understand.
Interior of Clapham North on the Northern Line, which is something like 2-3 metres wide platform-wise
There are very few metro systems in the world that have lines that exceed the Northern Line. San Francisco has one BART line that exceeds 100 KM, but its excuse is that it’s hemmed in by geography and operates in a very non-metro-like way I find.
China has two systems that are between 800 and 900 KM total trackage, but only Shanghai’s has three of which exceeds the Northern Line—and unlike the BART, the redundancy in the system is quite apparent.
So why do I care about the length? It’s simple: capacity of the system. You can only move so many people on these trains comfortably and metro systems are not meant for long distance travel. I am a bit baffled at Chinese systems doing 80-100 KM, but I am certain it works for their use cases and provides a heck of a lot of redundancies, but it will not here.
These trains are going to be maxed out by the time they finish passing through Surrey. While commuting patterns have shifted in the years towards staying within Surrey, the two largest economic centres remain downtown and Broadway, both of which are in Vancouver and are already on the system or will be before the Expo Line expansion completes.
Even at north of 600 people per trainset and even if you were to push the 70 second headways the system is capable of achieving, these sort of trains are meant to be for short journeys despite how many people it’ll move. This is what our system was designed with and there are only a few examples where you can buck this trend.
Two potential routes for SkyTrain in Vancouver going to the North Shore
We’re never going to really go much east beyond the terminus being built at Langley Centre. Perhaps the Expo Line will be part of the extension to the North Shore, but it’s looking like the powers that be in Victoria don’t want that and quite honestly I think it’s the right idea at least for now.
What about the rest of the valley then? Aside from maybe an extension of the Millennium Line out to Pitt Meadows or Maple Ridge, which really would run into the same problems as the Expo, we’re probably looking at alternatives from SkyTrain when trying to get out there from the western shores of the region.
I have made remarks around this problem in the past both in video and written form, but as it stands, your options for getting to Abbotsford or Mission for the most part relies options such as taking a crowded bus that runs hourly, riding a train that only leaves from the valley in the morning to then return in the evening, or driving a car.
The West Coast Express is a really pathetic system even though it does punch above its weight all things considered.
If this region is going to grow, if we’re going to resolve our housing situation, and if we’re going to reduce our greenhouse emissions, we’re going to need to think big and also systematically.
MVX and its grand vision of regional rail going into the Valley and even towards Squamish and Whistler
Buses are one part of the solution (the Fraser Valley Express operated by BC Transit is a great idea), but I think we need to get more serious with high volume movement of people. The folks behind Mountain Valley Express have the right idea, but it’s going to be a waste if we don’t align everything around it. We did this with SkyTrain back in 1985 and we will have to do this with any new mode of transportation in the future.
If we’re going to go on an infrastructure building spree in this country, let’s get people moving en masse. The Mark V is a symbol of the progress we have made and the progress we have to still make.
Also, to close off: good riddance to the Mark Is. They were good for the time, but they’re rubbish now and I am glad to see TransLink slowly taking them out of the system. I’ll be pleased to see them as heritage vehicles periodically, but I look forward to never having to be forced to ride in them again.