LRT vs SkyTrain costs used by UBC professor are misleading

A significant number of people remain misinformed about SkyTrain expansion and the actual costs of light rail.

In a news report aired on CTVBC just in July, Patrick Condon—a landscape architecture professor at UBC—claimed that SkyTrain along the Evergreen Line corridor would cost $200 million per kilometre, while a “modern tram” could be implemented for just $20 million per kilometre.

However, both statements are factually inaccurate.

The Evergreen Line project website states that the project will cost $1.4 billion for 11 kilometres of SkyTrain ^[26]—this works out to about $127 million per kilometre, not the $200 million per kilometre that Condon said on CTV.

As for Condon’s light rail cost estimate of $20 million per km, TransLink has previously estimated the cost of electric light rail transit running at-grade on the BCER Interurban corridor (a pre-existing corridor with no land acquisition requirements) at a higher $27 million per km ^[27]—and unlike the Interurban, there is no pre-existing ROW on the Evergreen Line corridor that rail transit could use.

In reality, light rail along the Evergreen Line corridor would operate alongside traffic and require rebuilding of the street at significant cost. Furthermore, as part of the Evergreen Line will run through Burnaby Mountain in order to reach Coquitlam city centre, the project includes an expensive bored tunnel regardless of whether SkyTrain or light rail is built.