SkyTrain officially opened for business on January 3, 1986. The first train left New Westminster station at 5:20 am.
Angus McIntyre tells me that the initial test section opened in June 1983. “You could take a free ride from Terminal and Main Station.” He has the First Riders Club certificate to prove it.
ALRT:
Of course, back then the name SkyTrain was still in the future, it was first known as Advanced Light Rapid Transit (ALRT). The name SkyTrain was adopted because of the panoramic views afforded to passengers as the train left downtown Vancouver.
Angus, who drove a Vancouver bus for over 40 years, also saved one of the original ads announcing free rides for eight days in December 1985. The ads, he says, appeared inside the buses.“The photo (above) was taken at Nanaimo Station looking west and has been “massaged” to look better. The ground has been tinted green,” he says. “There are nearby mountains to the west. [Minister] Grace McCartney insisted on having carpets in the new SkyTrain cars, and so there were. It wasn’t long before they were replaced with conventional flooring.”
In January 1986, Global TV’s Keith Baldrey was a Vancouver Sun reporter assigned to write a history of the SkyTrain.
“Few issues have sparked as much public debate in the Lower Mainland as the issue of a rapid transit system,” Baldrey wrote. “It took about 20 years of discussions, studies and debates before construction on what is now known as SkyTrain finally began in 1982.”
Planning suggestions he says, included a monorail from Vancouver’s waterfront to the airport, an extra deck on the Pattullo bridge, a subway between False Creek and Burrard Inlet, an LRT route through John Hendry Park at Trout Lake in Vancouver and a monorail down the Arbutus corridor to Richmond. Critics included those who hated that Skytrain was driven by a computer and was essentially untried. And those who lived along its planned routes, particularly those on Commercial Drive.
The cost for Skytrain was $1 one way within the city and $1.35 outside Vancouver.
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The original 2km section from Main Street station eastwards was very much a test track. The original 2 km track developed cracks in the concrete of the horizontal bearing beams. They had to make extensive difficult repairs to the concrete beam bearings and later modified the design for the final construction method. That’s why today if you look at guideways you can see they sawed away part of the covers at the piers. The construction of Skytrain was a huge noisy and disruptive undertaking even more so now with the Broadway tunnel!!!!
My first ride on the Skytrain was a media event. I was with BCTV at the time and we did a promotional video of Premier Bill Bennet taking a first ride in September of 1985. We were told that only this one time would there be trains on both tracks travelling in the same direction. This was done so that the Premier’s announcement about Expo 86’s theme of “transportation”. Travelling in a Skytrain car with another car on the other track going in the same direction in the background was indeed unique.
I recall being so entranced with Skytrain that I used to ride it just for the experience, with nowhere to go in particular. Every station had attendants wearing royal blue coats, very dignified-looking. I think at one time Grace McCarthy wanted to call it “Spirit.”
I also was on one of the first trains out of New Westminster, thought that the carpet has to go it will get dirty to fast. Well they did just that not long after the first ride. I lived in New Westminster at the time. Thank you for your stories, Merry Christmas 🎅
I also took that ride from New Westminster. I lived at Edinburgh st. near 20th. I also road my bike on the paths underneath the train. That was the best part for me!
Thanks for reminding readers it used to be called the ALRT. I remember riding to New West in the summer of 1985 for no reason except to see the sights from the SkyTrain. The sights turned out to be East Van rooftops, and the trip has remained a good memory for forty years.
My husband worked at the facility where Skytrain was built. In 1986 he was part of a crew that was sent from Ontario to live in New Westminster and work on issues with the train. This afforded our family the opportunity to visit and attend Expo.
I liked how the Skytrain’s security staff became immediately known as Skypigs.