Why your support for continuing the Broadway Subway to UBC is critical to Metro Vancouver’s future

Over the next three decades, Metro Vancouver is expected to grow by more than one million people. As the region grows, connecting research, health, innovation, employment and housing destinations is crucial to making life better for everyone who calls Metro Vancouver home.

As an alumnus, you understand the key role that UBC will continue to play in building a better future for the region. The university injects billions of dollars to the local economy, is BC’s third largest employer and provides education to thousands of Metro Vancouver residents every year. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, UBC’s enormous research capacity has been mobilized to assist in stopping the virus’s spread and helping the community cope with its effects. Looking ahead, we are applying this same energy to tackling the greatest challenges of our time – from climate change to inequality – and developing the talent required to drive BC’s economic recovery.

But we are at a pivotal moment in realizing UBC’s full potential to contribute to Metro Vancouver.

Once campus activity resumes in September, the current transit system will once again fall short for UBC students, faculty, staff and the thousands of Metro Vancouverites who travel to the Vancouver Point Grey campus from all over the region. UBC will once again be home to the busiest bus exchange in the region, and each day people will be passed up by full 99 B-Line buses on Broadway, the busiest bus route in Canada or the US.

The Broadway Subway project—extending the Millennium Line SkyTrain to Arbutus Street—is an important start and is now under construction but, on opening day (2025), the majority of the line’s passengers will still have to wait for buses to get to and from campus. This massive volume of bus traffic will continue to clog up the roads, cause people to use their cars instead and prevent Metro Vancouver from realizing the economic benefits that other world-class cities have reaped by better connecting their major universities through rapid transit.

The time has come to connect UBC with the rest of Metro Vancouver so that we can continue to grow and thrive together well into the future.

Three reasons to support extending SkyTrain to UBC

Shorter, easier commutes

When students return to in-person learning, we want to make their experience even better. As an alumnus, you know how important improving transit to campus is to students, who commute to campus from every municipality in the region. SkyTrain to UBC will greatly reduce transit times, helping get more cars off the road, improving the lives of commuters and making UBC more accessible for future generations of learners.

Better for the environment

By boosting regional transit ridership by more than 54,000 new transit trips per day, the Broadway Subway plus SkyTrain to UBC will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help us reach our 2040 target of having two-thirds of all trips to and from campus made by walking, cycling and transit a decade earlier.

More efficient and cost effective

Significant progress has already been made in the planning for the UBC extension, including endorsement from Vancouver City Council and TransLink Mayors’ Council. Maintaining this momentum could allow the project to be built more efficiently and affordably as a seamless continuation of the Broadway Subway Project, realizing more immediate job creation for Canadians and resulting in a station at UBC by 2030.

Help bring SkyTrain to UBC by 2030

UBC is pushing for progress on this once-in-a-generation infrastructure project and the community has shown strong support as well. A full 82% of residents from across Metro Vancouver that responded to a survey commissioned by UBC said they supported extending the Millennium Line all the way to UBC.

Your voice can help show SkyTrain to UBC is an important regional project and that residents of Metro Vancouver want the line to UBC completed.

Let TransLink know you support SkyTrain to UBC