VANCOUVER -- After more than two years of construction, upgrades to Granville SkyTrain station are now complete, and the station will reopen to the public Friday, TransLink says.
Six new escalators will be in operation, and three of them are the longest in Metro Vancouver. They each have more than 500 steps and are more than 35 metres long. The main entrance on Granville Street, as well as another entrance and staircase on Seymour Street will also reopen.
TransLink says the station will have new signage and monitors showing when the next train will arrive.
Granville is the first station of 13 that will receive new escalators as part of TransLink's Escalator Replacement Project. The transit authority plans to replace 37 escalators that are more than 30 years old on the Expo Line and at some West Coast Express stations. Escalators at Commercial-Broadway, Columbia, Waterfront and Nanaimo stations are also in the process of being replaced.
The escalators at Granville Station travel about 12,744 kilometres per year, TransLink says, which is roughly the distance from Vancouver to Mumbai. The escalators carried 10 million people per year prior to construction and have travelled nearly 385,000 kilometres since 1986, according to the transit authority.
