Bombardier Mark II Car 204

Location: VCC/Clark Station, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Operator of Vehicle: British Columbia Rapid Transit Company
Date of Photo: August 7, 2007

SkyTrain is certainly one of the most unique transit systems I’ve been on.  At one time, it was the longest fully automated driverless system in the world, but it has since been surpassed by systems in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (though it is still the longest rapid transit system in all of Canada).  The mostly elevated system averages speeds of 28 MPH (45 KPH) including stops, significantly faster than standard buses or even the B-Line buses I wrote about for the August 2020 Bus Photo of the Month.  The system includes what was the longest cable-supported transit-only bridge in the world from 1990 until 2019, aptly named SkyBridge, and also uses the Dunsmuir Tunnel in Downtown Vancouver, originally constructed in 1932 for use by the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1932.

I rode the entire system in 2007 during my only visit to Vancouver.  Since then, the Canada Line and Evergreen Extension have both opened, and the Expo Line and Millennium Line use a type of rolling stock that was only ordered and delivered in the past four years.  I hope to visit Vancouver and explore its transit system again at some point in the future, and certainly encourage others to do the same, as Vancouver is a delightful place to visit.

For more photos of Skytrain, please click here.