Millenium Rail Line
Vancouver, Canada
Busby + Assoc. Architects, Hancock Brückner Eng + Wright Architects, Hoston Bakker Architects, Merrick Architecture, Santec Architeure & VIA Architecture

Five architect teams create of 12 inviting civic rooms for Vancouver’s transit network

By Randy Gragg

© Nic Lehoux

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

First built for the Expo 86 world’s fair, the Millennium Line adds 16 miles to a SkyTrain system that had grown to 20 miles with 20 stations. The frequent gridlock (caused, in part, by Vancouver’s absence of interior freeways), combined with the 50 mph panoramas of the city’s spectacular natural setting, has made the first phases of the fast, efficient, high-flying, and wide-windowed SkyTrain popular enough to cover operating costs from the fare box alone. Meantime, during Vancouver’s double-digit growth of the 1990s, an impressive spine of transit-oriented, high-rise development has grown, with municipal encouragement, along the line.

The standardized station designs of the earlier SkyTrain segments established the line as a brand with commuters. But with this line serving a primarily suburban population—not to mention being a provincial-government-initiated project slamming through dozens of neighborhoods—the new line needed a more malleable identity for the communities to feel ownership.

With a breakneck schedule geared to finishing the project before an important provincial election, time and budget became equal to function in the program. The line’s guideway was placed on an independent, fast-track, design/build construction contract for a 13-month completion. The stations, therefore, not only had to be designed quickly, but literally around the concrete viaduct the trains would travel over. The most important programmatic demand became the creation of a smooth community-focused process.

Except for minor involvement in selecting the guideway’s route, VIA concentrated solely on the stations. Working with the IBI Group, an architectural planning firm, VIA set out to create a wide community-involvement process with a particular focus on strong storyboarding as a jargon-free way to lead people through the issues that affected the stations’ impact. By first involving the public in an exercise of redesigning two older stations, the team created a list of requirements and aspirations for all the stations, among them visibility for safety, wood for a sense of regional warmth, and lots of ambient nighttime lighting so the stations would function as secure, neighborhood-identifying beacons.

VIA developed a three-tier categorization for the stations, helping to assign budgets ranging from $4 million to $7 million. "Landmark" stations (such as Brentwood and Lake City) were targeted for major redevelopment sites or else were in high visibility locations. "Transitional" stations (Commercial and Lougheed) would link the line with future or existing transit lines. "Neighborhood" stations (like Renfrew and Rupert) were intended to be modest, finer-grained responses to community context and history.

A design/build consortium called SAR Transit won the guideway contract with a lowball bid and a take-it-or-leave-it design: a dual-track guideway built from 8-foot-deep, precast box girders on octagonal columns. In most cases, the stations sit atop either a wider section of guideway or a split version for center loading, both reinforced by shorter column spans.

VIA achieved the public’s desire for security and nighttime appeal with plenty of glass—around entrances, stairways, elevators, platforms—in short, where people move and where they wait.

See the August 2003 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
Millenium Rail Line

Location:
Vancouver, Canada

Architect:
Busby + Assoc. Architects, Hancock Br?kner Eng + Wright Architects, Hoston Bakker Architects, Merrick Architecture, Santec Architeure & VIA Architecture (see 'people & products' for complete architect information and specs)