Every Metro Vancouver SkyTrain station, ranked
This article was originally published on More McBarges and is reprinted here with permission.
Trains are good. Trains in the sky are great. Ranking things is the best of all.
Let’s rank all the SkyTrain stations.
Wait, all of them?
Yes. Obviously. Expo Line, Millennium Line, Canada Line, Evergreen Line that for some reasons has simply morphed in naming convention to Millennium Line Extension. All 53 stations are in this thing.
(Some people might argue that the Canada Line is not a SkyTrain, because it is mostly underground and managed by a different company. They are technically correct, but spiritually wrong.)
There are good stations and bad stations, but as we go through the list, we’ll also compare the strengths and weaknesses of the various lines, to the delight of approximately 47 people.
Won’t that be fun?
Scoring system
Every SkyTrain station was ranked out of 15 points, under the following categories:
Form (four points): Is it aesthetically pleasing, either viewing from afar, or within the station itself? Is it clean and well lit? Is there any interesting artwork or unique visual flair to the station as a whole?
Function (seven points): Yes, SkyTrain stations should look cool (according to me, a child), but more importantly, they should actually work well. Are the platforms wide? Is there a clear path from the platform to the street that won’t confuse people using it for the first time? Are the elevators large and easily found? Do you only have to use one elevator to get to the platform? Obviously it’s bad if there are two elevators, but surely there are none that need three, because that would ridiculous, right? Right?!?
Integration (four points): A SkyTrain station should look cool, and function well, but if it’s in
Braidthe middle of nowhere, what’s the point? Every station doesn’t need to be surrounded by a whole bunch of mixed-use towers, but it there should be a reason for it existing beyond “it’s a convenient midpoint to a more important stop.” It should integrate into the community with some sort of additional amenities, whether it’s a bus exchange, local culture, commercial outlets, parks…you know, something.
How serious are these scores?
Sort of serious?
Like other rankings, a bunch of friends went to all of these places, put in our scores, and then I took the average of them.
Unlike other rankings, we did this in three days instead of three months, and didn’t have a seven-hour argument at the end of it to determine whether Moderately Good Suburban Station should be considered the 28th or 29th best.
Is there a point to this beyond your love of trains and rankings?
This press conference is over!
There were more than 150 million SkyTrain boardings in 2019, from Waterfront (at 13.3 million) to Sea Island Centre (at 327,000), and they’re a hugely integral part of our transportation system.
And yet, some work. And some don’t. So let’s explore why.
TIER 6: BAD
53. Langara-49th (4.97 points)
52. Edmonds (5.38 points)
51. Gateway (5.76 points)
50. Columbia (5.83 points)
49. 29th Avenue (5.88 points)
All of these stations have specific fatal flaws—Langara has three elevators, Edmonds is in a weird void area that gets creepy at night, Gateway is overly windy and has a weird sunken platform, Columbia is dingy and convoluted, 29th Avenue is only covered for about 60 per cent of the platform—but all have the overarching flaws of accessibility problems, safety concerns, or lack of interesting things around them (Columbia somewhat excepted).
Langara is the worst because it is the newest and therefore the one that is least excusable, but all of these are visually uninteresting, mildly confusing, underdeveloped, and, with the exception of Columbia, not intuitively being a spot where you would conclude, “this was an important place to put a rapid transit station.”
Also, outside of Langara, they’re all 30-plus years old, and in the intervening years TransLink has seemingly put zero per cent effort into making things better.
Other than that they’re great.
TIER 5: FRUSTRATING
48. Bridgeport (7.2 points)
47. Sapperton (7.3 points)
46. Moody Centre (7.38 points)
These are all big, modern builds that look nice enough with decent signage and *should* work, and yet!
Bridgeport has the world’s tiniest platform for a such an important transfer stop, and if you’re getting off hoping to walk anywhere in Richmond that isn’t the casino, good luck (and even getting there is mildly confusing).
Sapperton requires a five-minute walk from the stop to the things it is intended to service (Royal Columbian Hospital and…uh…TransLink headquarters?) and doesn’t integrate with the industrial park to the east because reasons.
And Moody Centre? Look, anytime you build a SkyTrain station next to five breweries, and the busiest street in town, it’s very important to force everyone to walk through 400 metres of parking lots before they reach their destinations.
Boo to all of these.
TIER 4: MEDIOCRE
45. Patterson (8.14 points)
44. Renfrew (8.17 points)
43. King Edward (8.19 points)
42. Coquitlam Central (8.26 points)
41. Olympic Village (8.29 points)
40. Oakridge-41st (8.3 points)
39. Rupert (8.33 points)
38. VCC-Clark (8.35 points)
37. YVR-Airport (8.38 points)
36. Lake City Way (8.45 points)
When you close your eyes and picture a throughly mid SkyTrain station—the type that makes you go, “Oh right, I guess that exists”—chances are one of these comes to mind.
Like, look, I could go in depth on all of these stations, and point out in specific ways how the Less Important Canada Line Stops have a nice sheen to them but are infuriatingly small and require too many elevators, how the Non-Brentwood Millennium Line Stops are technically good but kind of cookie cutter and don’t really integrate into the surrounding area with any charm.
I could get into the ugliness of Patterson and how they’ve made it confusing to get out of the transit loop surrounding it; how there’s nothing around King Edward and why that makes no sense; how Coquitlam Centre, despite its name, is miles from anything; how the Olympic Village entrance is bad for pedestrians and NOT EVEN IN OLYMPIC VILLAGE; how the up and under walk to get out of Oakridge is particularly egregious; how there should really be a bike parkade for Rupert considering its location; how VCC-Clark will forever feel ridiculously overbuilt; how the YVR station’s cramped turnstiles make no sense considering it’s a freaking airport (and that’s not even getting into the convoluted route you have to take if you’re making an international flight); and how despite the fact I lived next to it for two years, i cannot tell you a single noteworthy thing about Lake City Way or why it should exist.
I could get into all that. But a) I’m not going to subject anyone to 10,000 words on SkyTrain stations (only 5,000!), b) all of these places are fundamentally fine enough, if mostly uninspiring and the opposite of unforgettable.
Still, they show the small ways in which a lot of SkyTrain stations seem 75 per cent complete, as though the organization got the basic structure signed off on, and then just sort of rushed through the rest of the work.
So here they sit.
TIER 3.5: MEDIOCRE BUT I WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM
35. Granville (8.5 points)
There are 15 stations in the SkyTrain system that had at least four million boardings in 2019, and for 14 of those, TransLink has done a pretty good job of recognizing that since a lot of people use the station, they should make it, you know, light and hospitable and not confusing and definitely not an MC Escher maze where you have no idea what part of downtown you’re going to emerge from after nine minutes wandering around a bunch of basement corridors.
Have fun when the elevators aren’t working.
34. Scott Road (8.75 points)
If you’re an urbanist philistine living west of Boundary, it’s easy to sneer at Scott, seeing as how it’s surrounded by seemingly kilometres of parking lots, with only a massive video arcade and Home Depot to break up the pavement monotony, with previous little housing constructed in the area in the decades since it was built.
And yes, that’s bad. However! It’s a surprisingly sturdy stop, with wide platforms, straightforward signage, and better integration with transit connections than you might expect.
Which, let’s not go wild—there are still 33 stations better than it. But it’s more than just a parking lot.
33. Nanaimo (8.95 points)
Speaking of stations that are better than their reputation!
Nanaimo has been the butt of jokes in very nerdy transit circles for some time, both because of its very dated design and the fact that this….
is what surrounds it.
If you can ignore that. though, Nanaimo actually has a pretty fantastic exterior plaza that was upgraded in the last decade, with well designed transition spaces to buses and bike paths, along with some interesting artwork that points out the history (pre and post-colonial) of the area. While it’s a very basic place, it’s also clear how to get in and out, though the lack of escalators on one side of the platform is a little bit vexing.
That doesn’t make up for the fact that there’s very little reason to stop at Nanaimo, or that the interior is showing its age. But it’s a nice reminder of little improvements to older stations can make a medium-sized difference.
TIER 3: Fine. Just fine.
32. Lincoln (9.11 points)
31. Sperling-Burnaby Lake (9.13 points)
30. Royal Oak (9.15 points)
29. Holdom (9.17 points)
28. Lafarge Lake-Douglas (9.23 points)
Hey look, it’s some more suburban stations that we visited thinking, “maybe there’s something fun or unique about this one!” and nope, they were all just fine.
All of these are slightly better than the mediocre tier, mostly because they’re decently functional and integrated into the surrounding community (with the exception of Sperling-Burnaby Lake, which 20 years on still only has a Chevron next to it, but has some nice artwork, and transitions into the Central Valley Greenway and the lake in a pretty good manner).
Let’s take a couple seconds though to talk about Lincoln and Lafarge Lake-Douglas, the two stops at the end of the Evergreen Line. Or more to the point, let’s ask a few rhetorical questions: Why does Coquitlam have two stops within 600 metres of each other? Why does the station that serves two giant malls (Lincoln) require either crossing a busy street or 300 metres of parking lots to actually visit one of the malls? Why is the stop next to City Hall and Douglas College on the opposite side of the street from those two things, again requiring cross a busy street? Why do both of the stations have a slightly unfinished vibe to them? At what point does Coquitlam’s decade-long project of Approve All The Condos transform into an interesting and integrated city centre and stop being A Collection Of Things?
Anyhow, Lafarge Lake-Douglas is the best of these because terminus stations are generally a little bit nicer looking and easier to navigate because of their overall importance in the system.
27. Sea Island (9.24 points)
Once you stop asking questions like, “wait, why does this exist?” (YVR gave $300 million to the Canada Line and there’s a small neighbourhood to the southeast) and, “okay, but does it justify it existing?” (probably not, given it has the lowest ridership in the entire system, at just 15 per cent of the median!), Sea Island is a perfectly average station, with above-ground walkways that cross the busy Grant McConachie Way and make us wonder why similar things couldn’t be used for most of the Millennium Line/Evergreen stops.
That said, it’s a super small and super weird station and we still have questions whether it should exist.
26. Production Way-University (9.33 points)
25. Burrard (9.43 points)
24. Lougheed Town Centre (9.45 points)
23. Stadium-Chinatown (9.53 points)
22. Braid (9.65 points)
21. Metrotown (9.83 points)
20. Vancouver City Centre (9.96 points)
19. Yaletown (9.97 points)
The best SkyTrain stations are both well used and well designed. The second-best SkyTrain stations are fairly well used and well designed.
The third-best SkyTrain stations are well used and…designed.
A bunch of these in this category are serious workhorses: Metrotown is the second-most-used stop in the system, Burrard is fourth, Vancouver City Centre is seventh; only derided Braid is at the lower end of the spectrum.
And overall, these places can handle their workflow and have some visual flair to them: consider the modern sheen of Metrotown, the lovely little garden at Burrard, or the way Stadium-Chinatown makes the most of being right up against the steep embankment connecting the viaducts, or how Yaletown and City Centre sit artfully in a relatively small space.
HOWEVER.
Production Way has bad integration with the adjacent bus loop and suffers from the same uninspiring cookie-cutter design issues as much of the Millennium Line; Burrard needs some serious TLC and has a terribly confusing circular design; Lougheed Town Centre is a long way from any “town” or “centre,” yet forces pedestrians on a fun little maze through several stairwells to get to their desired parking lot of choice; Stadium-Chinatown is fundamentally too small when there’s a game happening and the lack of an accessible connection to the lower entrance in 2024 boggles the mind; Metrotown did a giant renovation only for it to involve a literal connection to nowhere while forcing passengers to cross a busy road on foot; City Centre is a wasted opportunity for Expo Line integration and for the placemaking opportunity a “City Centre” station could have; and Yaletown requires two elevator trips and confounding internal circulation.
And these aren’t minor issues! They are obvious questions that present themselves right away when you wander through! And, for reasons of budget or engineering or something else (I suppose I could ask TransLink about this like a reporter but that would be less fun), we’re left to suffer with these 80 per cent finished structures. Alas.
As for Braid? Better than its joke reputation would suggest, with wide platforms and a nice transition from the entrance to the bus loop. If it was surrounded by things, it could actually be a Top 10 station!
But it doesn’t, infamously so. Which is why it’s 22nd.
TIER 2: Pretty good!
18. Inlet Centre (10 points)
One of those places built for many more people than currently use it, the large platforms and solid colour-coded wayfinding are well done, and the dual entrances on either side of Lougheed make the best of a busy intersection (and make us wonder why similar things couldn’t have been done at other stations).
There’s very little reason to use it at the moment, which is why it ranked 50th of 53 stops for ridership last year, but give it time. There’s lots of potential in the long-term, and good bones in the short-term.
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