Ranking Every SkyTrain Station

Frankly, it's a surprise it took this long

Trains are good. Trains in the sky are great. Ranking things is the best of all.

Let’s rank all the SkyTrain stations.

Wait, all of them?

Yes. Obviously. Expo Line, Millennium Line, Canada Line, Evergreen Line that for some reasons has simply morphed in naming convention to Millennium Line Extension, all 53 stations are in this thing.

(Some people might argue that the Canada Line is not a SkyTrain, because it is mostly underground and managed by a different company. They are technically correct, but spiritually wrong.)

There are good stations and bad stations, but as we go through the list, we’ll also compare the strengths and weaknesses of the various lines, to the delight of approximately 47 people.

Won’t that be fun?

How are you scoring them?

Every SkyTrain station was ranked out of 15 points, under the following categories.

• Form (4 points): Is it aesthetically pleasing, either viewing from afar, or within the station itself? Is it clean and well lit? Is there any interesting artwork or unique visual flair to the station as a whole?

• Function (7 points): Yes, SkyTrain stations should look cool (according to me, a child), but more importantly, they should actually work well. Are the platforms wide? Is there a clear path from the platform to the street that won’t confuse people using it for the first time? Are the elevators large and easily found? Do you only have to use one elevator to get to the platform? Obviously it’s bad if there’s two elevators, but surely there’s none that need three, because that would ridiculous, right? Right?!?

Integration (4 points): A SkyTrain station should look cool, and function well, but if it’s in Braid the middle of nowhere, what’s the point? Every station doesn’t need to be surrounded by a whole bunch of mixed-use towers, but it there should be a reason for it existing beyond “it’s a convenient midpoint to a more important stop”. It should integrate into the community with some sort of additional amenities, whether it’s a bus exchange, local culture, commercial outlets, parks…you know, something.

How serious are these scores?

Sort of serious?

Like other rankings, a bunch of friends went to all of these places, put in our scores, and took the average of them.

Unlike other rankings, we did this in three days instead of three months, and didn’t have a 7-hour argument at the end of it to determine whether Moderately Good Suburban Station should be considered the 28th or 29th best.

why are you looking at me like that

Is there a point to this beyond your love of trains and rankings?

This press conference is over!

There were more than 150 million SkyTrain boardings in 2019, from Waterfront (at 13.3 million) to Sea Island Centre (at 327,000), and they’re a hugely integral part of our transportation system.

And yet, some work. And some don’t. So let’s explore why.

TIER 6: BAD

53. Langara-49th (4.97 points)

52. Edmonds (5.38 points)

51. Gateway (5.76 points)

50. Columbia (5.83 points)

49. 29th Avenue (5.88 points)

definitely a station people have put care into

All of these stations have specific fatal flaws — Langara has three elevators, Edmonds is in a weird void area that gets creepy at night, Gateway is overly windy and has a weird sunken platform, Columbia is dingy and convoluted, 29th Avenue is only covered for about 60% of the platform — but all have the overarching flaws of accessibility problems, safety concerns, or lack of interesting things around them (Columbia somewhat excepted).

Langara is the worst because it is the newest and therefore the one that is least excusable, but all of these are visually uninteresting, mildly confusing, underdeveloped, and, with the exception of Columbia, not intuitively being a place where you would conclude “this was an important place to put a rapid transit station.”

Also, outside of Langara they’re all 30+ years old, and in the intervening years TransLink has seemingly put 0% effort into making things better

other than that they’re great

TIER 5: FRUSTRATING

48. Bridgeport (7.2 points)

47. Sapperton (7.3 points)

46. Moody Centre (7.38 points)

anytime you can create a 400 metre ghost parking lot between a skytrain station and amenities people are travelling to the skytrain station for you gotta take it

These are all big modern builds that look nice enough with decent signage and *should* work, and yet!

Bridgeport has the world’s tiniest platform for a such an important transfer stop, and if you’re getting off hoping to walk anywhere in Richmond that isn’t the casino, good luck (and even getting there is mildly confusing).

Sapperton requires a five minute walk from the stop to the things it is intended to service (Royal Columbian Hospital and…uh…TransLink headquarters?) and doesn’t integrate with the industrial park to the east because reasons.

And Moody Centre? Look, anytime you build a SkyTrain station next to five breweries, and the busiest street in town, it’s very important to force everyone to walk through 400 metres of parking lots before they reach their destinations.

boo to all of these

TIER 4: MEDIOCRE

45. Patterson (8.14 points)

44. Renfrew (8.17 points)

43. King Edward (8.19 points)

42. Coquitlam Central (8.26 points)

41. Olympic Village (8.29 points)

40. Oakridge-41st (8.3 points)

39. Rupert (8.33 points)

38. VCC-Clark (8.35 points)

37. YVR-Airport (8.38 points)

36. Lake City Way (8.45 points)

When you close your eyes and picture a throughly mid SkyTrain station,

the type that makes you go “oh right i guess that exists”,

chances are one of these comes to mind.

Like look, we could go in depth on all of these stations, and point out in specific ways how the Less Important Canada Line Stops have a nice sheen to them but are infuriatingly small and require too many elevators, how the Non-Brentwood Millennium Line Stops are technically good but kind of cookie cutter and don’t really integrate into the surrounding area with any charm.

We could get into the ugliness of Patterson and how they’ve made it confusing to get out of the transit loop surrounding it; how there’s nothing around King Edward and why that makes no sense; how Coquitlam Centre, despite its name, is miles from anything; how the Olympic Village entrance is bad for pedestrians and NOT EVEN IN OLYMPIC VILLAGE; how the up and under walk to get out of Oakridge is particularly egregious; how there should really be a bike parkade for Rupert considering its location; how VCC-Clark will forever feel ridiculously overbuilt; how the YVR station’s cramped turnstiles make no sense considering it’s a freaking airport (and that’s not even getting into the convoluted route you have to take if you’re making an international flight); and how despite the fact i lived next to it for two years, i cannot tell you a single noteworthy thing about Lake City Way or why it should exist.

a busy highway, industrial area and little used park are perfect places for a skytrain station right

We could get into all that. But a) I’m not going to subject anyone to 10,000 words on SkyTrain stations (only 5,000!), b) all of these places are fundamentally fine enough, if mostly uninspiring and the opposite of unforgettable.

Still, they show the small ways in which a lot of SkyTrain stations seem 75% complete, as though the organization got the basic structure signed off on, and then just sort of rushed through the rest of the work.

So here they sit.

TIER 3.5: MEDIOCRE BUT I WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM

35. Granville (8.5 points)

oh yeah that makes it all super clear thanks

There are 15 stations in the SkyTrain system that had at least 4 million boardings in 2019, and for 14 of those TransLink has done a pretty good job of recognizing that since a lot of people use the station, they should make it, you know, light and hospitable and not confusing and definitely not a mc escher maze where you have no idea what part of downtown you’re going to emerge from after nine minutes wandering around a bunch of basement corridors.

have fun when the elevators aren’t working

34. Scott Road (8.75 points)

it’s called community planning

If you’re an urbanist philistine living west of Boundary, it’s easy to sneer at Scott, seeing as how it’s surrounded by seemingly kilometres of parking lots, with only a massive video arcade and Home Depot to break up the pavement monotony, with previous little housing constructed in the area in the decades since it was built.

And yes, that’s bad. However! It’s a surprisingly sturdy stop, with wide platforms, straightforward signage, and better integration with transit connections than you might expect.

Which, let’s not go crazy — there are still 33 stations better than it. But it’s more than just a parking lot.

33. Nanaimo (8.95 points)

Speaking of stations that are better than their reputation!

Nanaimo has been the butt of jokes in very nerdy transit circles for some time, both because of its very dated design and the fact that this….

is what surrounds it.

If you can ignore that though, Nanaimo actually has a pretty fantastic exterior plaza that was upgraded in the last decade, with well-designed transition spaces to buses and bike paths, along with some interesting artwork that points out the history (pre and post-colonial) of the area. While it’s a very basic place, it’s also clear how to get in and out, though the lack of escalators on one side of the platform is a little bit vexing.

That doesn’t make up for the fact that there’s very little reason to stop at Nanaimo, or that the interior is showing its age. But it’s a nice reminder of little improvements to older stations can make a medium-sized difference.

TIER 3: Fine. Just fine.

32. Lincoln (9.11 points)

31. Sperling-Burnaby Lake (9.13 points)

30. Royal Oak (9.15 points)

29. Holdom (9.17 points)

28. Lafarge Lake-Douglas (9.23 points)

was this necessary

hey look it’s some more suburban stations that we visited thinking “maybe there’s something fun or unique about this one!” and nope they were all just fine

All of these are slightly better than the mediocre tier, mostly because they’re decently functional and integrated into the surrounding community (with the exception of Sperling-Burnaby Lake, which 20 years on still only has a chevron next to it, but has some nice artwork, and transitions into the Central Valley Greenway and the lake in a pretty good manner).

Let’s take a couple seconds though to talk about Lincoln and Lafarge Lake-Douglas, the two stops at the end of the Evergreen Line. Or more to the point, let’s ask a few rhetorical questions: Why does Coquitlam have two stops within 600 metres of each other? Why is the station that serves two giant malls (Lincoln) require either crossing a busy street or 300 metres of parking lots to actually visit one of the malls? Why is the stop next to City Hall and Douglas College on the opposite side of the street from those two things, again requiring cross a busy street? Why do both of the stations have a slightly unfinished vibe to them? At what point does Coquitlam’s decade-long project of Approve All The Condos transform into an interesting and integrated city centre and stop being A Collection Of Things?

anyhow lafarge lake-douglas is the best of these because terminus stations are generally a little bit nicer looking and easier to navigate because of their overall importance in the system

27. Sea Island (9.24 points)

hahahahaha yes

Once you stop asking questions like “wait, why does this exist?” (YVR gave $300 million to the Canada Line and there’s a small neighbourhood to the southeast) and “okay, but does it justify it existing?” (probably not, given it has the lowest ridership in the entire system, at just 15% of the median!), Sea Island is a perfectly average station, with above ground walkways that cross the busy Grant McConachie Way and make us wonder why similar things couldn’t be used for most of the Millennium Line/Evergreen stops.

that said it’s a super small and super weird station and we still have questions whether it should exist

26. Production Way-University (9.33 points)

25. Burrard (9.43 points)

24. Lougheed Town Centre (9.45 points)

23. Stadium-Chinatown (9.53 points)

22. Braid (9.65 points)

21. Metrotown (9.83 points)

20. Vancouver City Centre (9.96 points)

19. Yaletown (9.97 points)

The best SkyTrain stations are both well used and well designed. The second best SkyTrain stations are fairly well used and well designed.

The third best SkyTrain stations are well used and…designed.

A bunch of these in this category are serious workhorses: Metrotown is the 2nd most used stop in the system, Burrard is 4th, Vancouver City Centre is 7th, only derided Braid is at the lower end of the spectrum.

And overall, these places can handle their workflow and have some visual flair to them: consider the modern sheen of Metrotown, the lovely little garden at Burrard, or the way Stadium-Chinatown makes the most of being right up against the steep embankment connecting the viaducts, or how Yaletown and City Centre sit artfully in a relatively small space.

HOWEVER.

Production Way has bad integration with the adjacent bus loop and suffers from the same uninspiring cookie cutter design issues as much of the Millennium Line; Burrard needs some serious TLC and has a terribly confusing circular design; Lougheed Town Centre is a long way from any “town” or “centre”, yet forces pedestrians on a fun little maze through several stairwells to get to their desired parking lot of choice; Stadium-Chinatown is fundamentally too small when there’s a game happening and the lack of an accessible connection to the lower entrance in 2023 boggles the mind; Metrotown did a giant renovation only for it to involve a literal connection to nowhere while forcing passengers to cross a busy road on foot; City Centre is a wasted opportunity for Expo Line integration and for the placemaking opportunity a “City Centre” station could have; and Yaletown requires two elevator trips and confounding internal circulation.

(sigh)

And these aren’t minor issues! They are obvious questions that present themselves right away when you wander through! And, for reasons of budget or engineering or something else (i suppose i could ask translink about this like a reporter but that would be less fun), we’re left to suffer with these 80% finished structures. Alas.

As for Braid? Better than its joke reputation would suggest, with wide platforms and a nice transition from the entrance to the bus loop. If it was surrounded by things it could actually be a Top 10 station!

but it doesn’t, infamously so, which is why it’s 22nd.

TIER 2: Pretty good!

18. Inlet Centre (10 points)

One of those places built for many more people than currently use it, the large platforms and solid colour-coded wayfinding are well done, and the dual entrances on either side of Lougheed make the best of a busy intersection (and make us wonder why similar things couldn’t have been done at other stations).

There’s very little reason to use it at the moment, which is why it ranked 50th of 53 stops for ridership last year, but give it time. There’s lots of potential in the long-term, and good bones in the short-term.

17. Surrey Central (10.5 points)

less stressful than it looks!

It is a chaotic, windy, old beast of a station, and lord help you if you’re dropped off next to it but don’t really know where the entrance is.

Yet despite all that, Surrey Central is fairly good, owing to upgrades done in the last decade and integration with the bus loop and surrounding City Hall/SFU campus/etc. that mostly comes together.

16. Landsdowne (10.63 points)

Are the three Richmond mall stations a little too close to each other? For sure. Are they a little too similar to other, with the glass rectangle exterior getting cut open by the diagonal stairway? Quite possibly! But they’re all pretty wide and straightforward, connecting with the mall outlets without being too complicated to get in or out of, and neither suffer from overcrowding or feeling like a ghost town.

Of the three, Landsdowne is our least favourite, owing mostly to the lack of space outside the stop, and how it unspools into a giant parking lot instead of an active street. But there’s relatively little to nitpick about.

15. Gilmore (10.88 points)

Gilmore has one of the most pleasing entrances in the system, with staircase and escalators symmetrically positioned, yet at an angle to the street. Interesting art, good elevators, and lots of cover from the elements are also benefits.

also there’s this tiny bike rack on an angle for some reason?

Development around the station was relatively sparse for its first two decades of existence but it now picking up, and the line not being right on Lougheed Highway benefits things as well.

14. Brentwood (10.93 points)

some parts of the brentwood station are very modern and some parts are very concrete steps of why

All that money to create a massive development that envelops a SkyTrain station, and yet we have a mostly needless second level concourse that requires additional elevators, and awkward integration on the ground level for people trying to go anywhere other than the Somewhat Amazing Brentwood.

Brentwood has been in some form of renovation for seemingly all of the last decade, but overall looks very nice, has plenty of room for people to move around, and now finally is actually close to the mall,

But considering the location and the genuinely cool looking look of the exterior, this is still a case of missed opportunities.

13. 22nd Street (10.95 points)

We were all ready to leap scorn on another dated green Expo Line retread of a stop in the middle of nowhere, but then we actually got out and looked around. And couldn’t find any real issues with the size or coverage of the platforms (an issue for many of the older Expo stops), sections of the station with bad lighting, or elevators shoved to the side as an afterthought.

Then we went downstairs, saw a natural transition to a well-used bus loop, some art to keep folks distracted while they’re waiting for their connection, and that sneaky underrated view of the Alex Fraser Bridge and the land beyond.

Does that make for an amazing place to get on a SkyTrain or wait for a bus? No, and it suffers from the classic Expo Line flaw of The Platform Is This Narrow?!?, but it makes for an extremely well-serviced station, given its geographic and commercial limitations, and for that we were happy to be surprised.

12. Richmond-Brighouse (11.31 points)

Terminus stops can spare a little bit more room to be visually pleasing because they only have to focus on people getting on the train in one direction, and with a bright expansive entrance plaza and decent connection to amenities, Brighouse delivers in spades.

Making it single track creates a very small platform, and this is another station on a busy road where the most interesting things for people to do are on the other side.

But overall, you can wander in and around Richmond-Brighouse without finding anything particularly aggravating or confounding, and in SkyTrain land we call that a win.

11. Main Street-Science World (11.44 points)

A recent renovation really improved the platforms, while also adding extra elevators and providing a nice bike parkade. The way the trains go under part of the adjacent buildings as a mini tunnel is a lovely design touch. Being next to Science World and at the edge of downtown provides ample opportunities for integration with the surrounding neighbourhood.

But the platforms, while endlessly long, are still a tad narrow, the surrounding amenities to the building are an A&W and uhhhhh huh there should be more than that, the neighbouring park is mediocre at best, and the intersection at Main and Terminal is slightly frenzied at the best of times.

That the station is still so high up is a credit to how it gets the fundamentals right! That it’s not in the top 10 is testament to all the small missed opportunities.

10. Burquitlam (11.47 points)

Everyone’s favourite regional geographic portmanteau, Burquitlam is…actually pretty good?

A fairly compact build, you’ve got a big wide area that people spill out to, a solid bike parkade immediately visible, the mall on the same side of the road, and a mid-tier bus loop that directly connects with everything

None of these things are amazing on their own, but it’s the sort of “mid-level station” design with no flaws that we wish there were more of. And with low-rise commercial outlets on either side, it’s both functional enough for the present, and could handle more people in the future without too much worry.

9. Templeton (11.49 points)

Continuing our group of secondary stops that surprised us when we got out and examined things: Templeton!

Better known as “we’re close to the airport now” or “time to go to McArthurGlen!”, Templeton has two little flourishes that make it stand apart. One is the curved wood planks that give a pleasing variety to the ceiling, while the other is the station being at grade with the road but having an overpass to cross from one platform to the other, making things feel a little more expansive.

There’s no bus connections, bike parkade, or tangible reason to stop unless you’re going to the mall or Burkeville, but the fun design and clear signage made us cheer.

8. Aberdeen (11.53 points)

Finishing our group of secondary stops that surprised us when we got out and examined things: Aberdeen!

The northernmost of the Three No. Three Road Stations, Aberdeen has a fairly large plaza that’s partly covered with excellent wayfinding, one of the things that makes the Richmond stops stick out from most of the Millennium/Canada Line stops, where there’s minimal effort to have any sort of transition area from the street to the interior itself.

But the thing that really makes it pop is the direct entrance (at least from one side) to Aberdeen Square and Aberdeen Centre, the type of integration rarely found, and one of the things you start reallllllly noticing the more you get out at every stop and wander around and wonder why so few of them seamlessly transition to anything.

Aberdeen tries, and for that, it sits as the best of those that are not the best.

TIER 1: Actually good (not great. none of the stations are actually great)

7. Waterfront (11.83 points)

why is every photo of this station dimly lit

Waterfront looks very cool and Waterfront *feels* like a terminus station in the best sense of an old-time railroad building…but it’s also a mess of hallways and transition zones, with poor connection to actual buses or Mobi bikes, to say nothing of the wandering route required to get from the Expo Line platform to the Canada Line or vice versa.

And then there’s the Expo Line platform itself: it’s weirdly difficult to find within the station if you’re trying to enter off the side pocket between the main building and the 4,000 kilometre long entrance to the SeaBus. And when you’re trying to exit the platform, there’s always a 5% chance you will go the wrong way and be spun out somewhere next to the Convention Centre or Sinclair Centre — a contender for the worst mall in Metro Vancouver — as you squint your eyes and try and geographically reorient yourself.

Waterfront is still good, because the building is fun and it integrates three different routes fairly competently.

But it could shine much brighter, and not just in the literal interior sense of the word.

6. Commercial-Broadway (11.87 points)

It is always packed, much too packed to be an enjoyable experience, much too windy to be completely intuitive.

That second bridge they created a few years ago can be a tad confusing, and feels like it could be utilized better.

That being said, the wayfinding inside the station has considerably improved and made it much easier for tourists to figure out how to transfer, the use of four different entrances on opposite sides of Broadway is quite well done, and given the way it has expanded overtime, the Frankenstein-like construction comes together surprisingly well.

5. King George (11.93 points)

It only took 28 years to get cooking, but King George is now great.

Part of this is because of the immense transformation of the surrounding area: what was once parking lots and apartments placed at awkward intervals from the actual station is a small cluster of mixed-use towers directly beside the stop with a bunch of good restaurants on the ground floor. And while some stations are designed so people are forced to interact with whatever the busiest nearby road is, most elements of King George back out to the quieter Whalley Boulevard in a way that feels natural.

But another reason King George shines is the station itself: large covered concourses with good accessible integrated access to the community, with strong drop-off and ride share spots for bikes.

Add in the inherent benefits of being a terminus stop when it comes to the flow of people in and out of the interior, and it’s easily the best one in Surrey…even if it was decades in the making.

4. Joyce-Collingwood (11.95 points)

It really is something to look at before and after pictures of Joyce-Collingwood prior to its renovation from 2016-2020, and gawk at just how little space there was for pedestrians entering or leaving the stop before having to interface with cars on two very busy streets.

That of course has changed, and aside from the expansive room for people (and buses) on both sides of the station, there’s a boldness of colour with the design, nice amenities nearby, plenty of elevators, and overall feels new and modern — even if it’s a nearly 40-year-old stop without a ton of new development directly surrounding it.

In short: well done.

3. New Westminster (12.22 points)

“Delightful urban chaos!” wrote one of our rankers in their notes, and we can certainly understand if the messy collection of steps and pathways and escalators and elevators and stores and restaurants and movie theatres in the covered yet open concourse surrounding the station leads you feeling a bit overwhlemed.

But we gave New West the best score for integration, because the creation of what is essentially a mall surrounding the stop about a decade ago gives the space an energy befitting of the main station for a municipality, with a form that feels both lived-in and modern.

And while there are lots of ways to navigate the area, the two main points in and out of the stations itself are wide and fairly clear about where you have to go.

In short, it’s enjoyable, it’s hectic, it’s somewhat convoluted, but it’s plenty charming.

It’s New West.

2. Broadway-City Hall (12.44 points)

wait wait we can explain

First, we’re not detracting points for the never-ending construction that has surrounded the area the last two years for the Millennium Line extension, which understandably has made entering or exiting Broadway-City Hall a wee bit of a clusterfork at busy times.

Ignore that and focus on how the stop normally functions, and you’re left with a compact station that gets people in and out at a very quick pace with minimal hassle. The escalator and stair setup is simple but direct. The surrounding area is vibrant and quick to get to, with public art and direction connections with bus routes.

If more places in the system were just two storeys in height; if more places in the system felt like they were immediate parts of the neighbourhood instead of a distant portal; if more places in the system had clear intuitive wayfinding; then maybe Broadway-City Hall wouldn’t please us so much.

But they aren’t, and so this sticks out as a wonderful exception, one we’re happy to give the #2 spot to.

1. Marine Drive (13.00 points)

There’s nothing out of this world amazing about Marine Drive, but it’s the best station in the system because it does basically everything well.

A stop next to a busy street, but where people enter and exit off the quieter back side? Integration with a bus loop and commercial outlets? A primary entrance going up or down one storey to the platform? Clear separation and wayfinding for each direction it’s going? A modern sheen to the building that doesn’t feel ostentatious? A Canada Line station that is above ground and thereby doesn’t suffer from an infuriatingly small platform?

Marine Drive does all that, does it without any obvious flaws — other than the overall issues of capacity on the Canada Line as a whole, which we don’t give blame to individual stations for — and does it while having a neighbourhood slowly being built up around it.

One might consider this faint criticism of the network of SkyTrain stations as a whole: is the very best stop one that merely inspires feelings of competence rather than excitement? Is simply having wide platforms and a few stores nearby the marker of excellence? Is an iconic part of Vancouver’s transportation system not making most of the physical stations in creating opportunities for placemaking?

Yes.

At the end of the day, there’s a reason people gush about the SkyTrain but not the actual stations. But despite that, some are better than others.

And Marine is the best.