Dear Vancouver City Councillors,
As the student union representing over 60,000 students at UBC, we urge you to put the UBCx project connecting Arbutus Street to campus grounds via the SkyTrain front and centre at this year’s Annual General Meeting of the Union of British Columbian Municipalities (UBCM).
Every day, commuters along the Broadway corridor are familiar with the congestion that runs along this arterial corridor. With almost 165,000 daily boardings and more than 500,000 annual pass-ups, it is the busiest arterial corridor in Canada and the United States. The SkyTrain is the only option with enough capacity to meet demand whilst reducing emissions.
The UBCx project will also serve as an economic booster in uncertain times. Construction alone will create thousands of construction jobs, drawing upon mass timber sourced from BC. Furthermore, the completion of the route would ensure smooth access between campus and the Vancouver General Hospital, Broadway, and Mount Pleasant research, innovation, & tech centres. This will connect employers with skilled and talented university students as they search for jobs in fields such as medicine, biotech, computer science, and business -enabling synergy on high-value research projects and startups.
In addition to quality of life improvements and strengthening the economy, UBCx will also serve to advance reconciliation within the City of Vancouver. Not only will it make on-campus cultural resources such as the X̱wi7x̱wa Library and Museum of Anthropology far more accessible, it will also unlock 50,000 new homes along the Broadway corridor. Many of these new units will be part of Indigenous-led projects such as the Jericho Lands, made possible by provincial transit-oriented development legislation.
The Provincial Government committed to the SkyTrain extension in 2008 and committed to funding the business case in 2021 with a projected release date in 2022. Despite these promises, the business case still has not been released, and neither has a timeline for the project’s completion. Without these commitments; planning, financing, and construction have all been delayed by 17 years.
After 17 years of waiting, students are tired of long commutes and further delays. As of the release of this letter, the AMS’s SkyTrain to UBC Petition has over 14,000 signatures. On October 1st, the UBC Community will be making our voice heard with a rally for the SkyTrain to UBC outside of the AMS Student Nest.
The UBC community’s message is clear; the time to act is long overdue and we look forward to seeing you to raise this vital issue at UBCM when meeting with the Premier, the Minister of Transportation and Transit, and other representatives from the higher levels of government. It is time to finally connect UBC to the rest of Metro Vancouver via SkyTrain.
Best Regards,
Solomon Yi-Kieran, Vice President External, AMS of UBC
Riley Huntley, President, AMS of UBC
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