Residents living and working above the future Broadway subway stations will start to see some changes to the construction starting in the new year.
The B.C. government says that beginning at the Mount Pleasant station in January 2026, crews will dismantle and remove the traffic deck that supports the roadway between Main and Quebec streets.
The traffic decks, five temporary bridges, were built at street level at the start of the project to keep traffic moving along Broadway during construction of the underground stations.
The government says that when those traffic decks are removed, crews will reinstall permanent utilities, cover the station roof in soil and repave the street.
Pedestrian access to all businesses and homes will remain open but traffic will be detoured temporarily around the block.
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Then, after about four months, vehicle traffic will return to this section of Broadway with one lane in each direction. It will be another four months until the reconstruction is fully finished, according to the B.C. government.
The Broadway subway project is a 5.7-kilometre extension of the Millennium Line from VCC Clark station to Broadway and Arbutus with six new underground stations.
The $2.95-billion subway line was originally supposed to be finished in 2025, but is now aiming for a fall 2027 launch.
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Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s Minister of Transportation and Transit, said Friday there is no delay in the project.
“The project is still scheduled to complete on time fall of 2027,” he said.
“By doing it this way, the impact time will be cut in half. That’s extremely important. And at the same time, we’re also ensuring that the access to their businesses for pedestrians will not be closed, nor for people who live along the routes. Their access will remain open.”
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Businesses near Broadway Subway Project say construction impacting business
Construction has been impacting businesses, with some telling Global News that they don’t know if they can make it for another two years.
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Matthew Greenwood, who owns the Up in Smoke cannabis store at Broadway and Alberta Street, says sales have fallen 40 per cent and he’s had to slash his staff from 12 to three people since construction work started.
He said the loss of parking and the installation of large fences on the street in 2021 and 2022 were to blame.
“That’s when people decided it was too difficult to find parking in this neighbourhood and so they decided to go elsewhere. And also foot traffic is down hugely,” he told Global News in June.
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Support from the city and the province has been minimal, he added.
“They could have said, ‘You don’t have to pay property taxes because it’s a special construction zone and we don’t have jurisdiction.’ They could have waived my business licence fee and that of other merchants. They could have given us a grant to launch our e-commerce service because we lost foot traffic. There are so many things they could have done.
“At this point, any effort would have been welcome, but at this time right now, there has been zero effort on the hands of the provincial and municipal government other than prayers and thoughts.”
Ned Wyles, executive director of the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Association, told Global News in June that Greenwood is not alone.
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“There (are) hundreds of businesses along this line, everyone is different. They’ve all pivoted, done something different, opened an online store, but at the end of the day, they are all struggling, they are having to pull every trick out of their bag of tricks just to keep the doors open, through no fault of their own,” he said.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
