We now have a first look at SkyTrain’s Commercial-Broadway Station’s new additional fifth platform.

The temporary wooden fencing at the station’s Expo Line platforms has been concealing the construction activity of a new fifth platform, which will provide the Expo Line’s inbound direction towards downtown Vancouver with two platforms.

TransLink says this fencing will start coming down next week, and passengers will be able to see the new platform and its architecturally-unique roof structure from the existing Expo Line platforms.

When the new platform is fully complete and ready to take on passenger loads in early-2019, all doors on the inbound trains will open after stopping at the station, allowing passengers to board and disembark from both sides of the train.

This dual platform arrangement, used elsewhere in the world and referred to as the ‘Spanish Solution’, provides significantly more station circulation capacity, effectively reducing overcrowding at the station by dispersing passengers.

A new overhead walkway over Broadway links the new platform with the north side of Broadway and the Millennium Line platforms.

Ample vertical circulation capacity has been designed between street level and the new platform, which has four new escalators (providing both up and down escalator access), two sets of staircases, and two new elevators.

The south side of Broadway will have two escalators, one elevator, and a staircase, while the north side — beyond the new overhead walkway — will also have two escalators, one elevator, and a staircase.

Other upgrades include a significantly widened overhead walkway over the Grandview Cut to the Millennium Line platforms, expanded concourse areas, new in-station retail spaces, replacement of old metal mesh panels with glass panels, improved lighting, and a new major secure bike parkade with a capacity to hold over 70 bikes.

Construction on the $60-million SkyTrain station expansion and upgrade project began in mid-2015. The project was originally slated for a summer opening, but it was later pushed to this fall and now early next year.

As a part of the project, a new super-sized bus shelter for the 99 B-Line’s westbound direction towards UBC opened this past summer.

Station capacity upgrades are needed given that Commercial-Broadway Station is the region’s busiest transit hub with 90,000 train trips and 60,000 bus trips on a daily basis.

As a major hub and with the high rate of growth in regional transit ridership, the station is anticipated to become even busier over the coming years, especially once the Millennium Line’s Broadway Extension opens.

Existing passenger flows

Future passenger flows

See also