Diane Gendron arranges some souvenirs from the early days of SkyTrain, including a core from the SkyTrain bridge deck and a piece of cable, on the dining table of her Langley home.
“This is a piece of the cable that holds the SkyTrain bridge up,” Gendron explained.
She also owns a model of the first generation cars that started service just in time for Expo 86, the Vancouver-hosted world’s fair with the “man in motion” theme as well as posters and public documents.
Gendron was there from the beginning, as an information officer for what was then known as the provincial Urban Transit Authority (UTA).
And she will be watching closely as B.C.’s most high-profile public transportation service prepares for its next phase: expansion into Langley.
Expected to open in 2029, the SkyTrain extension will run from the existing King George Station in Surrey all the way to 203 Street in Langley, adding eight new stations, two of them in Langley, across 16 kilometres of track. It will come straight down Fraser Highway for almost its entire length, before veering off into Langley city centre.
The $6 billion project has been in the works since the 2018 decision to go with a full elevated SkyTrain extension rather than at-grade light rail.
Although the route isn’t expected to open for four years, construction is already underway in Langley , something drivers along Fraser Highway and the partly closed Industrial Avenue will have noticed.
Work along Fraser Highway east of Willowbrook Drive, and around Highway 10, is to relocate underground utilities, and for duct bank work, which involves electrical connections.
Construction of the Langley City Centre Station started over the summer with foundation piling work, which was mostly finished by early fall.
The process brings back memories for Gendron.
Gendron rose to become manager of communications at the UTA, often the public face of the project, including posing for newspaper photographs with mock-ups of the new driverless trains.
“I was at every single opening, every single event, because I was organizing most of the events,” Gendron recalled.
Expo proved to be a catalyst for a new rapid transit system, she said.
“When they first got got this designation to have an exposition, it was [going to be known as] Transpo. So the government of B.C. thought ‘Well, we’re gonna have this Transpo exposition here. We better have something to show for it’.”
It took just five years to complete the 20-kilometre Expo line connecting Waterfront Station to King George Station in Surrey. It opened on Dec. 11, 1985, for a couple weeks of free service and then started operating in January of 1986.
By then, the world’s fair had been renamed Expo 86 and the new, mostly elevated, transit system had been renamed SkyTrain, courtesy of Grace McCarthy, who was minister of Municipal Affairs in 1979 when the UTA started.
A Langley native, who grew up near Williams Park, Gendron is looking forward to the arrival of the line’s latest advance.
“Definitely, I will be riding on that SkyTrain when it reaches Langley.”