More than a month after releasing the precise locations of the street entrances of the six new subway stations for the SkyTrain Millennium Line Broadway Extension project, the provincial government released today the first preliminary conceptual artistic renderings of the stations.

The release of the early designs coincides with the BC Ministry of Transportation’s first public consultation on the project, with an online survey now open and a series of community open houses scheduled for the coming week at various locations.

While the preliminary renderings do not show the precise architectural detailing of the stations, they illustrate the general form and layout of the stations at street level.

No interior artistic renderings have been released at this time, with the exception of the cross-section rendering of the underground station complex for the Broadway-City Hall Station interchange between the Millennium Line and Canada Line.

Stations will be constructed to the same standard as the region’s most recent SkyTrain extension project, the Evergreen Extension. This includes both up and down escalators and elevators to every level of the stations, clear wayfinding and passenger information, public art, and the capacity to accommodate future ridership growth.

Platforms will follow the same 80-metre length standard of the Expo and Millennium lines, twice the length of most Canada Line platforms. It will have an opening-day capacity equivalent to 2.5 times the peak hour capacity of the existing 99 B-Line, with trains running as frequently as every three minutes during peak periods.

As a seamless extension of the Millennium Line, the extension will have a travel time of just 11 minutes between VCC-Clark Station and Arbutus Station, and about 47 minutes between Lafarge Lake-Douglas Station and Arbutus Station on a transfer-less, one-seat train ride. Ridership is estimated at 130,000 boardings per day upon opening.

The provincial government is aiming to select a contractor for the project by the spring of next year. Construction on the $2.8-billion, 5.7-km-long is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2020 for an opening in 2025.

Precise details and designs will be finalized after the contractor is selected.

Great Northern Way Station

The first new station, travelling westwards on the Millennium Line, will be located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Great Northern Way and Thornton Street, next to Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

The pit excavated for this station will double as the staging area and pit for tunnel boring machine operations, with the tunnel beginning just east of the station. The existing Millennium Line elevated track west of VCC-Clark Station will see a short westward extension, before diving towards ground level and into the tunnel portal.

Mount Pleasant Station

Mount Pleasant Station will be located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Broadway and Main Street, replacing existing low-storey commercial buildings.

A high-capacity underground station complex will provide a seamless connection from the existing Canada Line entrance hall level and both Canada Line platform levels to the new underground concourse level to reach the Millennium Line platforms.

This includes both up and down escalators and elevators between all levels of the station complex.

No new secondary street entrance is planned for this new interchange hub station, which will become one of the busiest stations on the SkyTrain network, as it will instead utilize the existing Canada Line street entrance. Without the 99 B-Line, it is estimated 75% of all foot traffic movements will be contained inside this station.

Fairview-VGH Station

Fairview-VGH Station will be located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Broadway and Laurel Street, near Oak Street. This location for the station entrance strategically provides close access to Vancouver General Hospital and the rest of the medical precinct.

Replacing existing commercial buildings at the northeast corner of the intersection of Broadway and Granville Street, the station entrance for South Granville Station will be integrated into a new five-storey office and retail building.

The proposal for this redevelopment by PCI Developments and architectural firm Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership is currently going through the City of Vancouver’s development application process.

Arbutus Station

Arbutus Station, the new western terminus of the Millennium Line, will have its station entrance building located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Arbutus Street and Broadway. The site is currently occupied by a Rogers retail building, ground-level parking, and a vacant lot.

This station has been designed as an interchange hub between the Millennium Line and the truncated 99 B-Line express bus route for the remaining journey to the UBC campus. There will be an on-street deboarding area for bus passengers on Arbutus Street, while an off-street bus loop for boarding the buses will be wedged into the site between the building and the Arbutus Greenway.

During construction, a two-block segment of the greenway will be closed to allow for the area to be a staging area, including the space needed to remove the tunnel boring machine. The greenway route will be temporarily rerouted to nearby streets.

The station will be designed to allow for a future Millennium Line extension to UBC.