Millennium Line
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 A train in Rupert station
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| Route length: | 20.3 km | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Millennium Line is an underground line of the SkyTrain Vancouver , the local transport system of the metropolitan area Metro Vancouver in Canada . The standard gauge line is 20.3 km long and has 13 stations. It opened on January 5, 2002 and connects Vancouver with Burnaby and New Westminster . The owner and operator is the transport company TransLink . The trains run fully automatically with linear motors .
route
The Millennium Line runs the same route as the Expo Line from Waterfront Station in downtown Vancouver to Columbia Station in New Westminster. After the underground branching station, the line leads through an approximately 1 km long tunnel and then elevated above the CN and BNSF route through the eastern part of New Westminster. The Millennium Line crosses the southern part of Coquitlam without stopping there.
After crossing the Trans-Canada Highway , the station Lougheed Town Center is reached, where a transfer to the future Evergreen Line will be built. The route continues elevated in the median or on the side of the Lougheed Highway to the west of the Brentwood Town Center station , where it meets the CN and BNSF route again. The Trans-Canada Highway is crossed a second time between Gilmore and Rupert . After Renfrew , the route runs through a cut to the terminus VCC-Clark , at Commercial Drive it crosses itself.
history
When the Expo Line opened in 1986 , an extension of the route to Lougheed Mall east of Burnaby was planned, from Royal Oak Station and along Edmonds Street. This plan was never realized. In the late 1990s, the British Columbia government announced the construction of an entirely new line from VCC – Clark to Lougheed Town Center (near the shopping center). This was supposed to be the first section of a "T-Line" that would lead to Coquitlam in the second phase . The provincial government opted for the Advanced Rapid Transit system from Bombardier , which required a connection to the factory workshop on the Expo Line.
Since the construction of this connection at Broadway station proved too impractical, both lines should be connected to each other in New Westminster instead. At the north end of the skybridge , which opened in 1990, points were installed; During this work, the bridge was only accessible in one lane. The branch line to Coquitlam was supposed to branch off at Lougheed Town Center station , which is why a third platform was built there. However, after a change of government, this sub-project was abandoned.
The opening of the first section of the Millennium Line took place on January 5, 2002, the trains initially operated between the Waterfront and Braid stations . The second section to Commercial Drive followed on August 31 of the same year. On November 21, 2003, the Lake City Way station was opened on the existing route . Since January 6, 2006, the trains have continued to VCC – Clark .
Projects
There are plans to extend the Millennium Line further west to Cambie Street in the long term. This would create an option to change to the Canada Line , which opened in 2009 and runs in a north-south direction . A further extension to the campus of the University of British Columbia does not seem sensible in view of the high costs.
The Evergreen Line from Lougheed Town Center to Coquitlam replaces the originally planned Phase II of the Millennium Line. This is also a SkyTrain route, after a conventional light rail system had initially been planned. The opening is scheduled for 2016, when the Evergreen Line will take over the section between Lougheed Town Center and VCC – Clark from the Millennium Line.
literature
- Bob Egby: SkyTrain, a catalyst for development . BC Transit, 1989
- WJ Hinkel, K. Driver, G. Valenta and H. Liebsch: yesterday-today-tomorrow. U-Bahn from 1863 to 2010. Schmid Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-900607-44-3 (chapter "Vancouver")
- Tom Parkinson: SkyTrain high technology rapid transit in Vancouver (SAE) . Society of Automotive Engineers, 1989
Web links
- Official operator side (English)
- Skytrain route network map
- Studies on the extension of the Millennium Line ( Memento from May 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive )