What the first year of building Surrey-Langley SkyTrain looks like

Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project reaches milestone of beginning elevated guideway construction

37-acre site in Surrey acquired for SkyTrain operations and maintenance centre

Finalized designs of the eight new multi-coloured stations on Surrey-Langley SkyTrain

The new Pattullo Bridge will gradually open to vehicle traffic in four phases this winter

Four-month full closure of Broadway segment for subway construction to remove traffic decks

According to the provincial government’s project office, as of mid-November 2025, all four special gantry crane machines used to install the entire elevated guideway, comprised of pre-fabricated concrete segments, have launched.

These gantry crane machines — the equivalent of tunnel boring machines that work above ground — are temporarily supported by the elevated guideway’s concrete columns, and they lift the concrete segments into place. When an elevated guideway span between a pair of concrete columns is finished, the machines seamlessly slide over to the next span.

Each gantry crane measures over 100 metres in length — longer than a SkyTrain station platform — and weighs over 400 tonnes.

So far, as of early this month, the gantry crane machines named Surrey Sprinter and Langley Launcher have installed five elevated guideway spans each.

Surrey Sprinter is moving west from 152 Street Station, while Langley Launcher is moving east from Hillcrest-184 Street Station. Both machines began their work in the late summer and early fall, respectively.

Fleetwood Flyer, moving west from Bakerview-166 Street Station, has completed eight elevated guideway spans. Clayton Clipper was the last to launch earlier this month, moving west from Hillcrest-184 Street Station.

Recently, there has been some social media attention on the perceived very close proximity between newly-built elevated guideway and adjacent buildings near Hillcrest–184 Street Station. More specifically, some have noted how the guideway appears to loom over the nearby Mackenzie Estate townhouse complex, which was only built in 2013.

The guideway is being constructed on what was previously an informal grassy open space that stretched along Fraser Highway in front of the complex.

However, the low-density townhouse development may have a limited future in its current form. The site holds strong redevelopment potential for higher-density transit-oriented uses, as outlined in the City of Surrey’s future Clayton Corridor Plan — especially given its direct adjacency to the station. A potential future redevelopment would certainly mitigate this with building setbacks, which is a common practice across the region, where SkyTrain’s guideway is adjacent to a new development.

Previous condition:

Fall 2025 condition:

 

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Previous condition:

Future condition:

Although the lengthy Fraser Highway construction site is highly visible, central to the ongoing construction effort is the extensive off-site, pre-cast process being used for the elevated guideway.

Thousands of standardized segments are manufactured in advance and transported as needed, allowing for faster assembly.

The temporary pre-cast concrete segment factory in Campbell Heights — complete with its own concrete plant — has now pre-fabricated over 600 elevated guideway segments for installation, ever since the concrete was poured into the mould for the first segment in April 2025.

It is anticipated over 2,000 segments will be poured by March 2026, growing to over 4,000 by Summer 2027. From this 30-acre, pre-cast concrete facility, the segments are trucked to the Fraser Highway construction site and fed to the gantry crane machines.

As for other progress to date, elevated guideway superstructure work — including pile installations and bents construction — is now complete at Hillcrest-184 Street Station, and the elevated guideway foundation work between 138 Street and 164 Street is nearly complete.

Over half of the elevated guideway foundation work between 164 Street and 184 Street is also complete, and nearly half of this same work between 184 Street and 203 Street is finished.

There will be an exception to the elevated guideway design in just one area; instead of pre-cast concrete segments, a steel guideway will span above Fraser Highway in the area above Highway 15 (176 Street), which will be installed by Spring 2026.

This same area is immediately adjacent to SkyTrain’s future South of Fraser Maintenance and Storage Facility — also known as the fifth operations and maintenance facility (OMC5) for the Expo and Millennium lines’ network. OMC5 will be located on a vacant 37-acre site at the southeast corner of the intersection of Fraser Highway and Pacific Highway.

Some preliminary site preparation first began this past summer, with clearing the area’s vegetation and peat and covering it with layers of gravel and sand. There will be minimal activity on this site through early 2029 to enable preload settlement. This train depot, reaching completion sometime in the first half of the 2030s, is expected to carry a construction cost of roughly $1 billion, and it is separate from the $6-billion Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project.

Along much of Fraser Highway, the roadway has been temporarily narrowed from four vehicle lanes to two vehicle lanes — one lane in each direction — to enable the SkyTrain construction work.

There is also a temporary full closure of Fraser Highway between 140 Street and 96 Avenue within Green Timbers Urban Forest to uniquely enable the construction of Green Timbers Station (at 140 Street) directly above the median of the roadway, whereas all other stations are being built on the side of the roadway.

The full closure in the Green Timbers area first began in April 2025 and was originally anticipated to end in October 2025, but it was later extended through the end of December 2025.

If all goes as planned, elevated guideway construction will reach completion in mid-2027, and station construction and related work will finish in late 2028. Railway tracks and electrical and automated train control systems installation will begin in Spring 2026 and end in late 2028. Full system testing and commissioning will begin in late 2026 in preparation for the late 2029 opening.

Along the elongated Expo Line, a one-train ride between Langley City Centre Station and Waterfront Station in downtown Vancouver will be 65 minutes, while the trip between Langley City Centre Station and King George Station will be 22 minutes.

Work is also progressing on the separate project of SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension reaching Arbutus in Vancouver. As of earlier this month, track installation has reached full completion on the westbound direction, while installation on the eastbound direction has reached completion from VCC-Clark Station to Broadway-City Hall Station.

In early 2026, there will be major vehicle traffic disruptions along Broadway, when crews begin dismantling the temporary traffic deck bridges above the subway station construction sites, and start to fully restore the roadway. The subway will open in Fall 2027.

You might also like:
• Surrey-Langley SkyTrain project reaches milestone of beginning elevated guideway construction
• 37-acre site in Surrey acquired for SkyTrain operations and maintenance centre
• Finalized designs of the eight new multi-coloured stations on Surrey-Langley SkyTrain
• The new Pattullo Bridge will gradually open to vehicle traffic in four phases this winter
• Four-month full closure of Broadway segment for subway construction to remove traffic decks