Broadway subway completion delayed to 2026 due to summer concrete strike: Ministry

The scheduled completion date for Vancouver’s Broadway subway has been pushed back to early 2026, the Ministry of Transportation said Thursday.

The ministry has pinned the delay on a five-week concrete strike in June, which it said affected the start of tunnel boring.

“As a result, the overall schedule for project completion has been moved from late 2025 into early 2026,” it said in a progress bulletin.

“A precise update on the project timeline will be provided in the spring of 2023 when station excavation and tunnel boring are further advanced. The project remains within budget.”

0:44 Broadway Subway Project reaches critical phase of construction with start of tunnel excavation

The update came as the ministry announced the second of two massive one-million-kilogram tunnel boring machines, which will carve out the subway’s five-kilometre tunnel.

The first machine, which was launched on Oct. 7, has made “significant progress” and is near its first breakthrough at the Mount Pleasant Station at Main Street and Broadway, the ministry said.

Crews have also installed more than half of the columns which will support a SkyTrain guideway between the existing VCC-Clark station and the future Great Northern Way-Emily Carr station.

The finished project will be a 5.7-kilometre extension of the Millennium Line from its current terminus at VCC-Clark station to Arbutus Station, with a projected cost of at least $2.8 billion.

A future expansion from Arbutus Street to UBC is supported by the City of Vancouver, UBC and the TransLink Mayor’s Council, but has not secured funding.