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Granville SkyTrain Station to reopen Friday after 2-year partial closure
Granville SkyTrain station is set to reopen Friday after a partial closure to upgrade six, 30-year-old escalators. The upgraded station will also have new signage and monitors displaying the arrival of trains.Three of the six escalators replaced during the Granville Station upgrade project are pictured here. TransLink says the three are the longest in Metro…
Granville SkyTrain station is set to reopen Friday after a partial closure to upgrade six, 30-year-old escalators. The upgraded station will also have new signage and monitors displaying the arrival of trains.
After being closed for two years, the Granville and Seymour street entrances at Granville SkyTrain Station will reopen to the public on Friday with six newly upgraded escalators.
Sany Zein, the vice president of infrastructure and engineering for TransLink, says the company understands the construction has been an inconvenience for the public and for customers.
“This was a big challenge to remove the old units and put in the new units. This is why the project took about two years,” he said during a station tour on Thursday.
The station reopens as TransLink's ridership numbers are on the rise. In June, the company said ridership had more than doubled since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to about 30 per cent of its usual numbers.
Zein said the newer, more robust escalators will be less likely to require maintenance, providing better reliability for the customers who use the station.
TransLink said in a statement Thursday three of the new escalators are the longest in Metro Vancouver, at 35 metres each, with over 500 steps in total.
The $14.52 million investment for the new escalators is part of the Rapid Transit Systems Rehabilitation and Maintenance Project paid for through the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, which is funded by the federal and provincial governments, as well as TransLink.
Company CEO Kevin Desmond said in a written statement that prior to construction, the 30-year-old escalators supported nearly 30,000 customers every weekday.
“The completion of these Granville Station upgrades couldn't come at a better time, just as many of our riders are returning to SkyTrain,” he said in the statement.
Apart from the new escalators, TransLink said customers will also have access to new signage with directions and monitors displaying the next arriving trains.
Granville Station is the first of 13 stations to receive new escalators. TransLink said it will replace 37 others along the Expo Line and at West Coast Express stations.
Construction is currently underway to replace escalators at Commercial-Broadway, Columbia, Waterfront and Nanaimo stations.
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