Collingwood and Central Park
In today’s modern Vancouver, the section between Joyce-Collingwood and Patterson stations on the Expo Line is often seen as a relatively sleepy area with access to a large park, a corporate office for a major employer, and a connection to one of the Rapidbuses.
However, if you have a keen eye and opt to walk along the route, you might stumble across some interesting history that makes this stretch of the SkyTrain network rather peculiar due to it having one of the few BC Electric Railway overpasses still left standing directly underneath.
Situated between Kingsway and Sandell on Smith, you’ll find this interesting little structure that is very much out of place and is towered over by the railway overhead. Today, it acts as an underpass for access to the office building on the other side, but beyond that it doesn’t have much of a purpose today. It likely still stands as there is a gas line which intersects underneath.
However, until sometime in the 1990s, there was another overpass just 100 metres to the west at the intersection of Boundary and Vanness, which remained even after the Expo Line had opened. It was to serve the industrial complex which eventually became the various apartment and condominium buildings we know Joyce-Collingwood for.
This likely resulted in a lack of need for the railway overpass to continue existing. For the most part it is now gone and now Boundary Road is now six lanes as opposed to four and it is still an uncomfortable connection for cyclists who wish to continue on the BC Parkway, which follows most of the Expo Line.
That last part is a bit of a thorn in my side as the overpass could have served a use for cyclists who wanted to avoid having to make an awkward connection to the path on the Burnaby side. Aside from that, the whole overpass itself has some interesting history and could have been a station if BC Transit had its way in the 1980s.
Two stations on the above map do exist on the modern Expo Line: Patterson and Collingwood East, which is now Joyce-Collingwood. However, one other station on here labelled as Park Ave could have existed as it was a station under consideration when planning for the Expo Line.
Park Ave was really what we today call Boundary Road and its station was situated directly behind what is now one of TELUS’ corporate office. As you can see in the above photo, the overpass is very much the same design as the one I paid a visit to.
BC Transit planners were seriously considering a station called Boundary in that same spot. BCTel (who was gobbled up by TELUS in the late 1990s) was the province’s largest employer at the time and the government was keen to provide the office workers with access.
Why it never got built is unknown to me, but I imagine since the distance between Patterson and Joyce-Collingwood isn’t terribly long that they opted to not bother. As it would have straddled a zone boundary, it’s possible it could have produced a possible conflict. However, considering the existence of two consecutive stations with this fate on the Millennium Line, I think that is a moot point nowadays.
All that remains today of Boundary Station, formerly Park Ave Station is just a retaining wall for the old BCER overpass which was torn down sometime three decades ago.
This originally appeared on cohost.org/VancouverTransit but has been moved here due to the site’s shutdown.
