[scryer]

Originally Posted by casper

Yes.

Commuter rail in Vancouver currently goes from Vancouver to Mission City. Rolling stock goes into Vancouver in the morning and is unused until afternoon commute. You can potentially take one train set that would sit unused all day in downtown Vancouver and use it to run in the opposite direction (e.g. Vancouver-Abbotsford or Hope) in the morning and still have it back in the city for the evening commute. Or for the morning commute start one train in Hope.

A few problems with Vancouver's commuter rail network:

- Vancouver likes to build Skytrain to the areas that commuter rail lines would likely service to ie. Port Moody and Coquitlam. IMO this is a good problem but it does "sort of" make the development of commuter rail lines less appealing since Skytrain is reaching to further destinations already.

- The WCE rails are still owned by CN/CPR (I forget which: I know, I should have my BC residency revoked for not knowing) and they still share the rails with freight trains so that makes things difficult especially considering that it is still a popular freight train route.

- There is a lot of opportunity to develop Coquitlam Central Station into an excellent inter-connection node for WCE to interconnect with Skytrain. There is some speculation that to extend the WCE to other municipalities that they would have to connect with Coquitlam Central so long as the tracks are still sharing with freight.

However part of the main appeal of the WCE (as it operates now) is that it is a direct connection to Waterfront station in Downtown Vancouver. If Coquitlam Central was redeveloped as an interconnected transit hub then one would have to transfer at Coquitlam Central to the Millennium line and then transfer later onto the Expo line to get to downtown Vancouver. Remember: downtown Vancouver is the most popular transit destination in Metro Vancouver for the most part.

It basically all relies on CN/CPR selling their rail to translink and I personally don't think that they will do it without optimizing another route to carry a similar amount of freight. So I think that your idea could work however it would more likely follow a route of Abbotsford/Hope > Coquitlam Central just based on loose unprofessional speculation . Feel free to correct me if anyone knows better .

Originally Posted by casper

A commuter line from North Vancouver to Whistler would likely work.

We already have the Rocky Mountaineer so the route is entirely possible. However the demand: not so much. Whistler would have to be crying for people to commute to them from Vancouver in order for a rail link to be feasible.

Originally Posted by casper

Victoria could use commuter rail to Langford.

To me this will be unlikely since Victoria will probably oppose anything rail. Their NIMBYs are next-level and Victoria has never had rail nor are they preempting any development of transit corridors to my knowledge.