SkyTrain Station Renovations

[urbancanadian]

Here are the latest renderings of Metrotown Station. I can't find the link online anymore, but they're from Translink at the December 2014 open house.

[Sheba]

With some of the buses doing drop off and / or pick up at the station houses (complete with up and down escalators) that should reduce the number of people taking the walkway across.

Where did you see that the elevators will stop at the mid-level where the walkway joins up? If the elevator only goes from the ground up to the platform (as it did up until now) then the walkway folks will take the stairs up to the platform. Also they double as the emergency exit stairs - there's no way they'd put in an escalator in that spot. Anyone who has trouble with stairs will cross at ground level and take either the escalators at either end or the elevators.

[GlassCity]

I thought they were gonna build a bus loop under the station, what happened to that?

[Large Cat]

Originally Posted by Sheba

With some of the buses doing drop off and / or pick up at the station houses (complete with up and down escalators) that should reduce the number of people taking the walkway across.

Where did you see that the elevators will stop at the mid-level where the walkway joins up? If the elevator only goes from the ground up to the platform (as it did up until now) then the walkway folks will take the stairs up to the platform. Also they double as the emergency exit stairs - there's no way they'd put in an escalator in that spot. Anyone who has trouble with stairs will cross at ground level and take either the escalators at either end or the elevators.

If the elevators don't stop at the middle floor, all passengers needing elevators will be prevented from taking advantage of the passerelle. Presumably the passerelle exists precisely for those passengers who might take extra time or feel extra discomfort crossing a 5 lane street like Central, and building the elevators in such a way as to make the passerelle useless to them would not make sense.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I thought they were gonna build a bus loop under the station, what happened to that?

The city of Burnaby is dead set against it and wouldn't give building approval, which TransLink needs. So some version of the current bus loop is staying.

Originally Posted by Large Cat

If the elevators don't stop at the middle floor, all passengers needing elevators will be prevented from taking advantage of the passerelle. Presumably the passerelle exists precisely for those passengers who might take extra time or feel extra discomfort crossing a 5 lane street like Central, and building the elevators in such a way as to make the passerelle useless to them would not make sense.

All the people who need the elevator already have to cross at ground level, which isn't really that bad (I'm more concerned about crossing Willingdon at Central - I put some info about that in Road Infrastructure). If you put them on the walkway then crossing there is going to brutal. The whole point of having entrances at each end plus the elevators in the middle is to divide up where people enter the station - not funnel them all into the central section and make accessing the elevators even more difficult.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Sheba

The city of Burnaby is dead set against it and wouldn't give building approval, which TransLink needs. So some version of the current bus loop is staying.

Huh. That's really weird, I can't imagine what problem they could have with it. Thanks for answering.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Huh. That's really weird, I can't imagine what problem they could have with it. Thanks for answering.

The problem is that originally they wanted a "bus loop" on Beresford, and nixed that idea. So instead they're putting it on Central Blvd's side heading east, and from what I can presume, send the buses down Central Blvd to Imperial to turn right. Keep in mind that there is practically no traffic on Beresford, while Central Blvd is fairly busy during mall hours. They're not removing traffic lanes however, from the diagrams and from when I asked during the Open House they're just encroaching on the Skytrain station's land to build the Central Blvd's stops. The part remaining at the mall will serve the community shuttles.

When asked about the CMBC Trolley wires, the guy then said "That's up to CMBC", which suggests to me that the Trolley wires might not get moved, and this new setup might not warrant an investment in keeping them since they would need to be installed along Imperial or Kingsway, depending on which direction the trolley-bus needs to go.

... or you know, they could just use the Trolley bus routes under the mall that already exist.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Kisai

The problem is that originally they wanted a "bus loop" on Beresford, and nixed that idea. So instead they're putting it on Central Blvd's side heading east, and from what I can presume, send the buses down Central Blvd to Imperial to turn right. Keep in mind that there is practically no traffic on Beresford, while Central Blvd is fairly busy during mall hours. They're not removing traffic lanes however, from the diagrams and from when I asked during the Open House they're just encroaching on the Skytrain station's land to build the Central Blvd's stops. The part remaining at the mall will serve the community shuttles.

When asked about the CMBC Trolley wires, the guy then said "That's up to CMBC", which suggests to me that the Trolley wires might not get moved, and this new setup might not warrant an investment in keeping them since they would need to be installed along Imperial or Kingsway, depending on which direction the trolley-bus needs to go.

... or you know, they could just use the Trolley bus routes under the mall that already exist.

Yeah Burnaby didn't want a bus loop right in front of the line of brand new towers along Beresford, which they also want to keep as a quiet residential side street. In a way it's too bad as that would have made a lot of sense for the station layout - people would use the current entrance if they were going to the mall, and the new entrance to go to the newly moved bus loop. Now that's not going to happen.

It's weird what you were told about the trolleys and which buses would use the loop. When I went to the open house in June I was told that the trolleys would use the loop as the wires were already installed and it would cost a lot to redo that. Meanwhile a bunch of the other buses would drop off passengers at one end of the station and pick them up at the other end (or across the street - depending on which way the route travels).

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Large Cat

If the elevators don't stop at the middle floor, all passengers needing elevators will be prevented from taking advantage of the passerelle. Presumably the passerelle exists precisely for those passengers who might take extra time or feel extra discomfort crossing a 5 lane street like Central, and building the elevators in such a way as to make the passerelle useless to them would not make sense.

Originally Posted by urbancanadian

Here are the latest renderings of Metrotown Station. I can't find the link online anymore, but they're from Translink at the December 2014 open house.

Also this. The new walkway will go to Station Square (who are paying for it) so the people moving into the towers (and presumably the people who work / shop there) can travel above traffic to get to the station. I'm not sure where it will join up and I really can't see them blocking one end of the driveway for the loading bays.

Currently the walkway is at the other end of the bus loop and there's a now blocked off path above the loop to Station Square - and in this image that is gone. It doesn't show the escalators to the bus loop either. So travelling from the main part of the mall to the station is going to be at ground level.

[MIPS]

I'm assuming they forgot to include a layer when they rendered that because it makes the reason for a walkway almost pointless. It just hovers over the service road between Superstore and Station Square.

[osirisboy]

I'm not clear on where the walkway ends either. It looks like it Andes in the middle of the road. And what's with that narrower long section sticking out? It would've been nice to have connected to the walkway that connected station square with Metrotown but that's totally removed now?

[WarrenC12]

They should keep the existing walkway (along with adding a new one).

Is the road being widened to accommodate the bus stops on the station side?

[Sheba]

I sent out an e-mail asking about the overhead walkway connecting to nothing and the missing path above the bus loop. It's been sent on - I don't expect to hear an answer until after the weekend.

The new station houses have single up / down escalators from the ground to the platform - there is no middle landing to join an overhead walkway to. People hated leaving the current walkway in place and having to walk down stairs and then over to the new entrance.

[Large Cat]

I'm not too worried about the walkway going to nowhere...it looks like something the malls will have to address with their own money, and I have no doubt that they will do so. My question is still, why would there be no escalators between the platform level and the passerelle level? That seems pretty important in terms of convenience for passengers commuting to the mall every day. If someone is tired on their way home they will think "oh there are three elevators, why take the stairs? And then the elevators will get clogged up. At least an up escalator as they have next to the emergency stairs at the middle station house of commercial Broadway would help alleviate this.

[officedweller]

I think they want to discourage use of the passarelle to distribute the flow of passengers.

I can see Metropolis reconfiguring the mall so an entrance is located at the end of the passarelle.

[osirisboy]

In my limited experience I found there is a large number of people that get off the train and head to the mall. As of now with the new plans it seems a bit convoluted to get into the mall. Although how it is set up now is way under built. Agreed hopefully the mall will fix their end

[red-paladin]

I'm pretty sure that the existing walkway from Metropolis to Station Square is just missing in the rendering of the new passarelle.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by osirisboy

... Agreed hopefully the mall will fix their end

Here's a mall map - should be an easy alignment.

Originally Posted by officedweller

...
For Metrotown, the drawing says "Central Passerelle built by partners" (i.e. Ivanhoe Cambridge & Anthem / Beedie) -

I wonder if Metropolis will move a mall corridor to be closer to the passerelle?

The current mall map even suggests it.
A new corridor would cut through what was originally Eaton's.
The Eaton's store would have forced the original passarelle to be further east.


http://metropolisatmetrotown.com/mall-map

[CanSpice]

Reconfiguring Metropolis looks to be a bit of work. If you look at the Upper Level of the mall map, the "bridge to nowhere" that's in the above renderings comes in at the bottom edge where Zara is. I guess they could blow a hole in the middle of Zara and turn that into an entrance?

[officedweller]

Should be do-able
- remember that whole end of the mall used to be Eaton's and was reconfigured.