Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway

The Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway was a heritage electric railway line that operated from 1998 to 2011 between Granville Island and Olympic Village Station (north of 6th Ave just east of Ash Street) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It operated only on weekends and holidays, usually from May to mid-October, and was aimed primarily at tourists. Two restored interurban trams were used on the line, which used a former freight railway right-of-way.

The line was owned by the City of Vancouver. The cars were operated by volunteers from the Transit Museum Society. The car shown (1207) was privately owned. By 2018 both tram cars (1207 and 1231) have been donated and moved to the Fraser Valley Historical Railway in Cloverdale.

Heritage service

Service was inaugurated on July 29, 1998, and was considered to be a demonstration project for a modern downtown streetcar system that the city plans to develop. It continued to operate almost every summer through 2011, as an excursion-oriented historic electric railway line. In 2010, the heritage service did not operate, because the line was used for a modern-streetcar demonstration service known as the "Olympic Line" (see section below), and temporary modifications made to the line's overhead wire for that operation took longer than expected to undo, also delaying the start of 2011 service. The 2011 season began on July 1 and was scheduled to run until mid-October. The line did not operate in 2012, with service suspended indefinitely due to financial constraints, and there are no set plans to resume operation. Furthermore, a Vancouver City Council report published in March 2014 recommended against ever reviving service on the heritage line.

When last fully operational in 2011, the line ran from Granville Island to a stop near Science World and Main Street-Science World Station. However, Olympics-related construction razed sections of the line east of Olympic Village Station on the Canada Line.

Fleet of heritage railcars

The fleet also includes an ex-Brussels La Brugeoise et Nivelles PCC-style streetcar, painted red and cream.

The line's operator, the Transit Museum Society, also owns a large fleet of vintage buses and trolley coaches.

Olympic Line

From January 21 to March 21, 2010, a free demonstration service called the "Olympic Line" (named for the 2010 Winter Olympics) ran every six minutes, 18 hours a day on the Downtown Historic Railway between Cambie Bridge and Granville Island, using two modern Bombardier Flexity Outlook streetcars, numbers 3050 and 3051, borrowed from the Brussels tram system. The City of Vancouver and the administrators of Granville Island paid $8.5 million for associated upgrades to the infrastructure.

The two stations were single side platforms with two shelters providing partial coverage from the elements. The Olympic Village Station shared parking spaces with existing Canada Line station at West 2nd Avenue and Cambie Street. The Granville Island Station was only assessible on foot from Anderson Street near West 3rd Avenue below Highway 99.

The City considered the streetcar demonstration "a tremendous success", with over 550,000 boardings during the two months of the experiment. Bombardier received an award for "Exceptional Performance and Outstanding Achievement" at the 2010 CUTA awards, recognizing its operation of over 13,000 one-way trips with zero equipment failures, zero station delays and zero injuries. Mayor Gregor Robertson has indicated a desire to continue operation of the line, with a potential extension to Main Street-Science World station via False Creek South, but mentioned that the city alone lacks the millions of dollars needed to complete the construction and equipment purchases. Nonetheless, a streetcar along the alignment used by the Olympic Line was part of two of the proposals for rapid transit running east–west through the city of Vancouver in 2020.

Proposed future service

The proposal for a full-service modern streetcar line would extend the former heritage line through Chinatown and Gastown to Waterfront Station, and eventually to Stanley Park. There would be a separate line into Yaletown with longer-term potential for a number of other lines.

On October 13, 2014, Emily Jackson, writing in '' Metro Vancouver Newspaper'', reported that Friends of the Olympic Line called on Vancouver City Council to commit $5 million to incorporate a refurbished line into Vancouver's transit authority.
The organization has called for the line to be extended to Main Street–Science World Station. The City has allocated $400,000 to decommission the line's former route.

In a 2021 report a two line light rail network (12 km and 25 stations) using most of the old route of the heritage line as well as new routing was estimated to be in the $1.1 billion range.

See also

* List of heritage railways in Canada
* List of museums in Canada
* TransLink (British Columbia)

Notes

References

External links

Suzanne Anton Vows Fast Track Downtown Streetcar
''Georgia Straight''

{{Canada heritage railways

Downtown Historic Railway
Streetcars in Canada
Heritage railways in British Columbia
Heritage streetcar systems
1998 establishments in British Columbia
Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway