User:Saucy/sandbox/Broadway Subway (SkyTrain)

The Broadway Subway Project, also called the Broadway extension, is a 5.7 km long extension of the Millennium Line of Metro Vancouver's SkyTrain rapid transit system. The project extends the line west from its current terminus at VCC–Clark station to Arbutus station at the intersection of Broadway and Arbutus Street. The project was approved by the provincial government on March 16, 2018, and major construction began on May 13, 2021. The extension is expected to open in 2025, at an estimated cost of $2.83 billion.

The extension is entirely underground, except for a 700-metre-long elevated guideway connecting to the existing Millennium Line. Stations will be constructed using the cut-and-cover method, while the tunnels between them will be excavated by tunnel boring machine.

Design
The Broadway Subway extends the Millennium Line west 5.7 km from its current terminus at VCC–Clark. The extension begins at VCC–Clark on an elevated guideway, travelling 700 m until entering a tunnel adjacent to the Emily Carr University of Art and Design; the line stays underground for the remainder of the extension. The line turns southwest, arriving at Great Northern Way–Emily Carr station. The line turns south, then west to travel underneath Broadway, arriving at Mount Pleasant station at the intersection of Broadway and Main Street. It continues west to connect to the Canada Line at the existing Broadway–City Hall station; the station was designed with a "knock-out" panel to accommodate this extension, and will be upgraded as part of the project. The line continues further west down Broadway, calling at Oak–VGH and South Granville stations, before terminating at Arbutus station. A short stub will be constructed at Arbutus to allow for a future extension west to UBC. The existing 99 B-Line bus route, which follows much of the Broadway Subway's route, will be truncated to only run between Arbutus station and UBC.

To reduce surface disruption to businesses, as was prevalent during construction of the Canada Line, the project will make extensive use of tunnel boring machines. Cut-and-cover construction will only be used at stations.

Construction


Preliminary work on the extension began on February 19, 2019, with the installation of trolley poles and wires on 12th Avenue between Arbutus and Granville Streets that are required in order to reroute trolley buses off of Broadway for the duration of the construction of the subway. On June 22, 2020, trolleybuses were removed from Broadway. The provincial government initially had a plan to have a contractor selected by April 2020 to allow for construction to begin later that year. On July 17, 2020, the provincial Ministry of Transportation announced that Acciona Infrastructure, a Spanish conglomerate, and Ghella, an Italian company, would be in charge of construction. Demolition of buildings, to make room for station entrances and construction staging areas, began in February 2021.

Major construction on the extension began on May 13, 2021. "Traffic decks" began to be installed over Mount Pleasant, Broadway–City Hall, Oak–VGH, South Granville, and Arbutus stations, to avoid closing Broadway while station construction takes place underneath. Construction of the elevated guideway at the eastern end of the extension began on December 13, 2021. This 700 m guideway is the only above-ground portion of the extension, and connects the existing VCC–Clark station to a tunnel portal adjacent to the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

The tunnel boring machiness for the project were delivered to Vancouver between April and June 2022. Two identical machines, each 6 m in diameter and 100 m in length, would dig about 18 m of tunnel per day, at a depth of 15 to 20 metres below the surface. They will be launched at Great Northern Way–Emily Carr station in the summer of 2022; it is expected to take about a year to complete the tunnels.