Millennium Line UBC Extension Alignment and Integration

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As Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his supporters aggressively push to densify Vancouver, staff will ask Council to endorse yet another extension to the Broadway Millennium Subway, including three subway stations west of Arbutus on Tuesday, March 29.

If the UBC extension (UBCx) is eventually approved, the Broadway Plan will affect all of Upper Kitsilano, from West 10^th to 16^th Ave, meaning towers of up to 40-storeys near stations and up to 20 storeys throughout our neighbourhood. Kitsilano will be enveloped by the plan all along the Broadway Corridor from First Avenue to Broadway and from Burrard to Alma; then it’s on through West Point Grey and terminating at UBC. The plan would likely spell the end for many independent stores that operate on West Broadway and West 10th. Avenue in West Point Grey, and demolition of the area’s most affordable housing.

The UBCx was approved in principle by the TransLink Mayor’s Council in 2014, but it is important to remember that it has yet to win funding from senior levels of government. Staff needs Council’s approval of the UBCx and stations at Macdonald, Alma Streets, and somewhere in the Jericho Lands (expected to be home to 20,000 new residents) along 8^th Avenue to justify the extension and to strengthen its business plan for densification around subway stations. Building luxury condos/apartments around the stations will help pay the project’s enormous bill.

Patrick Condon, professor of the Urban Design program at UBC, believes that a light rapid transit system to UBC would be a better option. “Green infrastructure,” he wrote in a 2019 story in The Tyee, “should be greener, cheaper, and smarter” as opposed to the heavy, grey, expensive and stupid infrastructure we build now.” However, City engineering staff say in the UBCx motion that subway technology is the only mode of transport being considered. At last count, the price tag for the UBCx was in the neighbourhood of $4.5 billion.

Unfortunately, new housing along the UBCx will not be affordable to the people the City claims it wants to help. Condon and others point to Oakridge (another stop on a recent subway line) as an example of how housing prices will skyrocket.

According to TransLink, a 2021 survey on the UBCx found 92% of survey respondents and 67% of respondents to a related telephone poll supported the proposed project. Only 5% of survey respondents and 10% of research poll respondents were opposed. Support was highest among respondents who lived in UBC, the Endowment Lands, and in the City of Vancouver north of West 16th Avenue between Arbutus and Blanca.

Surveys of this type never seem to mention costs outside of capital costs to build. They do not equip respondents with alternatives beyond the one proposed on the matter of routes and type of rapid transit. Nor do they warn of negative consequences such as loss of access to businesses during construction, loss of existing homes and rental accommodations, and the increased costs to both those already living here and those wishing they did. Without knowing the impacts on those who live near the proposed development, it’s easy to say “it’s faster than a bus” or “construction jobs pay well.”

UKRA believes we must act now to prevent neighbourhoods from being swallowed whole by the Broadway Plan. Please write to City Council to share your concerns before Tuesday, March 29. You can also write to individual Councillors or speak at the Meeting that begins Tuesday at 9:30 am.