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This post has been sitting with me for a long while: why do the three SkyTrain lines have the colours they have today?

If we look at the Millennium Line, it’s coloured as yellow; the Expo Line is coloured as blue, and the Canada Line is light blue. The latter is weird I must admit, but it might help to explain the history of colouring on SkyTrain maps.

This is the original SkyTrain map. No mention of an Expo Line because it was all that existed when it opened for Expo 86, the World’s Fair hosted here in Vancouver. It was a simple line which ran from Waterfront to New Westminster. The line was coloured in red and that is curious because it was pretty standard for BC Transit and its predecessor BC Hydro née BC Electric Railway.

In this 1930s map, all of the street cars and interurbans were given a red line. It might seem confusing to look at, but being that the transit network went to where people lived and people lived near the street cars and interurbans, it was fairly simple.

Eventually when maps needed to provide information about fares being charged by zone, the red colour went away in favour of black and stuck for nearly two decades.

TransLink inherited the colour scheme from BC Transit and continued to mark bus routes as red. With the opening of the Millennium Line and subsequent naming of the original SkyTrain line becoming “Expo” in honour of its origins, colours were needed to differentiate their service separate from buses.

So why yellow and blue?

Blue should be an easy colour to talk about. SkyTrain was opened in time for Expo 86.

If we look at the Expo logo itself, we see a blue and this was the primary colour for the fair itself. With blue being the colour of Expo and being one of the primary colours used for the original SkyTrain livery, it stands to reason the best choice was a dark blue.

So Expo was easy, but then why is the Millennium Line given a yellow colour? The naming is straightforward, it was opened in time to mark the new millennium, but the colour is strange.

It would be safe to assume one thing: look at the political parties in power.

The political party in provincial power at the time of SkyTrain’s inauguration was Social Credit (Socred). Their primary colours were blue and red and they were not too dissimilar from BC Transit’s livery and in turn SkyTrain’s.

In the 1990s, the NDP colours were not orange as we know them now but instead blue, yellow, and red. The Millennium Line was an NDP project and it is safe to assume that the colour chosen was purely to have one that wasn’t that of the Socreds.

This is the best explanation I have because we see it play out when we talk about the Canada Line, because then things get weird. The Canada Line has a light blue colour, right? Let’s talk about some logos here.

If we look at the SkyTrain logo adopted by TransLink when the Millennium Line opened, we see two colours atop of the “SkyTrain” text itself: blue and yellow. This logo was made to indicate the two lines of the then current SkyTrain system. So let’s see the logo used for the Canada Line when it was under construction.

Like the SkyTrain logo, we see two familiar lines, but then we see a red line added with a maple leaf at the tail just above “Canada Line”. It is safe to assume that during planning and construction that the Canada Line itself was going to have a red colour. So why the change?

The prevailing thought was that red was initially chosen as it was a colour of the BC Liberals. However, red is also the primary colour of the federal Liberal party. As provincial politics in British Columbia are weird and the BC Liberals (now BC United) were not at all associated with the federal party other than by name (unlike the NDP), it has been suggested that pressure from the Conservative Party likely led to the colour not being adopted in order to secure funding.

Whether or not this is the case is hard to say, but there has been another instance where a colour was chosen for a rapid transit project for purely political reasons.

The extension of the Millennium Line into Coquitlam in 2016 was originally slated to be its own individual light rail line. It’s a recurring theme to have light rail become SkyTrain in Metro Vancouver and the “Evergreen Line” was eventually replaced by the “Evergreen extension” for a brief period of time after it was established it would integrated into the existing network.

For a few years, the Millennium Line had a separate indicator for its Tri-cities extension only because the mayors of the time wanted it.

Though he said he understands TransLink’s intent to keep the name consistent with the Millennium Line, he said that name for that line has never made sense.

The mayor suggested SkyTrain lines could be renamed for their actual destinations.

“We still think it’s a problem that needs a better solution than what TransLink initially proposed,” he said, adding the city suggested Evergreen-Millennium, but that was turned down because it was too long.

“They’ve got some work to do clearly, they’ve [TransLink] gone down the path to having it renamed the Millennium Line without telling anybody.”

Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay is equally unimpressed with the idea of a name change for the new line.

“You just don’t give up on your brand,” he said.

“People buy into a brand, people identify with it locally. So the Evergreen Line is our line in the Tri-Cities, it’s always been that way. We’ve always identified with it.”

Seven years later and nobody refers to it as “Evergreen”-anything.

The current SkyTrain map shows a standard yellow colour and makes no mention of the special name given. The branding does remain in the stations themselves, but if the network is ever extended into Port Coquitlam, it is difficult to say whether or not it would keep it all. It should be kept in mind that these same demands never came from Vancouver for its extension to Arbutus or from Surrey or Langley for the extension out into the valley.

There is one more colour to talk about before I close this off: pink.

When SkyTrain has maintenance or must run a special service when dealing with station upgrades, the colour pink has been reserved to indicate that it is temporary.

So there you have it: the colours chosen to represent the lines on the map are either purely political or something is disrupted.

This was originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.

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After SkyTrain was extended to Scott Road in 1991 and plans were put in place to extend it to the Expo Line’s current terminus, King George, there was a lot of talk by BC Transit and the then ruling Social Credit (Socred) government of the time on where to take Metro Vancouver’s transit network next. With more service means more trains and BC Transit made it a point to investigate its options.

Test Vehicle 06 or “TV06” was brought over from Urban Transportation Development Corporation’s facility in Kingston, Ontario. UTDC were the creators of the original SkyTrain technology and vehicles, so it was a natural fit for them to be involved with the creation of a successor vehicle.

UTDC’s approach was simple: take an existing Mark I vehicle and extend it. What was interesting about their approach was that the vehicle they chose was used on the SkyTrain demonstration line in 1983.

The vehicles used for the demonstration were the property of UTDC and had been used for testing and sales purposes after they returned home. UTDC decided that one of the vehicles would be better served as a test platform for a longer version of the vehicle with an additional door.

BC Transit continued to investigate options for the future of SkyTrain including hiring a film production crew to build a mockup train. This train was made of wood and while I cannot confirm, I have read that it was put on display at the 1991 Pacific National Exhibition (PNE).

These trains may look familiar despite never having made any revenue service appearance, as this version of the Mark II was eventually used for Kuala Lumpur’s metro system. They were sold as cheaper than existing SkyTrain vehicles, could hold twice as many people per car, and were of course still compatible with the existing system.

However, plans were about to briefly change with an upcoming election. The sitting Socred government lost handily to the New Democratic Party (NDP) in the 1991 fall election. This new government had long been skeptical of SkyTrain and wanted to implement light rail (LRT) as opposed to advanced light rail (ALRT).

The story around the Millennium Line potentially becoming LRT too deserves its own article, but suffice to say, after a few years, this idea was abandoned sometime after Premier Mike Harcourt resigned and Glen Clark took his place.

He favoured going back to SkyTrain and in 1998, his government had BC Transit partner with Bombardier, UTDC’s successor to not only use ALRT technology for the new line, but to also build the trains right next to SkyTrain’s maintenance facility in Burnaby.

A “dummy” train was made and tested on the Expo Line during the planning stages for the new vehicles. It had no powertrain and thus had to be pushed around, but it was used to provide data to BC Transit and Bombardier for the development of a new train.

In 2000, the Mark II test vehicle started to venture on the now Expo Line. For the most part, tests were flawless and minus a few tweaks to the line itself such as changes to switches or placement of track indicators, they eventually entered revenue service in 2001 just in time for 2002’s opening of the Millennium Line.

The Mark IIs and Mark Is were a common sight on both lines. However, the Mark IIs were more popular as they had features such as air conditioning and were considerably quieter in operation. Exiting a Mark II train during the morning or afternoon rush was also much easier thanks to having three doors and more space when standing.

While the Mark I is still a common sight on the Expo Line, they are approaching nearly four decades in use for the original train sets and despite a refurbishment programme starting in 2013, they are due to be retired.

Later this year, Mark V trains will be delivered from Alstom, who has since acquired Bombardier. A total of 41 new train sets have been ordered to replace the aging Mark I fleet and to allow for the extension of the Millennium Line to Arbutus to meet expected capacity needs. By 2026, these new trains will completely replace the Mark Is.

I personally hope someone acquires one of the Mark I pairs and opens a coffee shop inside of one called the “Expresso Line”. If you like that idea and want to run with it, it’s free.

Portions of this article were sourced from this Buzzer piece written back in April 2019. This was also originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.

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Shopping centre with a disused railway going through

Map showing its old path

If you find yourself wandering in and around Chinatown and Gastown, you might notice an alleyway that there is an alleyway that goes on an angle from the port to International Village shopping centre, with its entrance continuing this path towards about where Stadium-Chinatown station stands today.

This is what is left of a railway that connected the Canadian National Railway’s (CNR) yard in what is today Yaletown plus other railway services to the Canadian Pacific (CPR) yard near the Port of Vancouver.

Prior to 1932, the CPR’s only option to reach Burrard Inlet was a pathway that crossed through a cut in Vancouver’s busy city centre. The railway intersected with the busy streets of Pender and Hastings and passed the BC Electric Railway’s downtown terminus at Carrall.

This unsurprising produced a great deal of congestion for the city and railway. The railway needed to get mail, freight, and passengers around quickly and the city wanted fewer accidents. At a cost of CA$1.6 million (or about CA$33 million in 2023), a tunnel was built under Dunsmuir street to then s-curve to an exit at about Burrard Street.

CPR trains could now quickly loop around to their station at what is now Waterfront and no longer have to find themselves at odds with other railway traffic or people.

This tunnel would keep its importance until passenger and freight services to the area ceased in 1982. It would then eventually become the underground portion of the Expo Line we have on the SkyTrain system today.

As for the former surface railway, it had become disused and over time development in the area turned it into a parking lot, a beautified alley, and the main hall of a shopping centre. It seems that both the tunnel and the cut it replaced have survived in their own ways.

This was originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.

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Princess Diana walking along the platform of Patterson Station in 1986 (City of Vancouver Archives)

Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and Princess Diana greeting two people (Vancouver Province)

In 1986, during Expo ’86, King Charles III (then Prince) and his then wife, Princess Diana paid a visit to Patterson Station in Burnaby to see the new rapid transit system. They boarded car 014, dubbed the “Spirit of Canada”, and made history as the first visiting monarch to use the transit system.

However, this visit overshadows another royal visit and one that had substantial ramifications for the country the monarch heralded from.

Plaque as seen on train 014

On May 8th, 1989, Thailand’s Princess Chulabhorn paid a visit to Vancouver and rode on the very same car the Prince and Princess of Wales rode three years prior. Ten years later, Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok would open its BTS Skytrain.

BTS Skytrain vehicles passing each other (author unknown)

However, unlike the Vancouver SkyTrain (note the upper case ‘T’ in our name), Bangkok’s system did not use trains from Bombardier and instead its initial set were from Siemens. The reason for the name was that the original system proposal was the Lavalin Skytrain, as SNC Lavalin itself was responsible for the construction of Vancouver’s system. This project was cancelled in 1992 officially due to financial reasons, but it was suggested politics played a role in its demise.

For whatever reason, despite SNC Lavalin’s lack of involvement in the succeeding project, the name “Skytrain” stuck and in 1999, the Bangkok Mass Transit System officially opened and named as “BTS Skytrain”. Perhaps the Princess just liked the name? Who knows.

This was originally posted to cohost.org/VancouverTransit.

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Approximate location of the former station, Connaught Hill (Google Street View)

When riding down the Expo Line from Edmonds to 22nd Street, one may notice that it is a rather lengthy ride. At nearly 2 KM, it’s nowhere near the longest distance between stations, but when it was the interurban Central Park Line, there was a station in-between the two.

The BC Electric Railway (BCER) had a station around what is now 9th Avenue in Burnaby or simply situated south of a SkyTrain maintenance facility. Connaught Hill, named after after the western province of Ireland named Connaught, was a small station serving the now-residential area straddling the Burnaby and New Westminster border.

Station location in New Westminster (Google)

Back then, it was a large gravel pit. The hole created conveniently ended up becoming the SkyTrain maintenance facility we have today.

Connaught Hill as it appeared in the 1950s (TransLink / BC Transit)

Today, there sits no station but you can visit its old location when travelling along the BC Parkway.

Stopped to take a photo as I cycled on by. You can see the remnants of the old tracks left behind.