Can a new light rail line work as a regional bypass for Metro Vancouver, and if so, how should it be built? A full capstone feasibility study with a clear, evidence-based verdict.
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★ Selected to present at Northeastern's capstone showcase event
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Every major transit project begins with one question that decides everything after it: should this actually be built? A feasibility study is how that question gets answered with evidence instead of optimism. For my capstone, my team produced a complete feasibility study for the proposed V&LI Light Rail Transit line, a regional rail service running about 25 to 30 km from Arbutus in Vancouver to Coquitlam Central along the existing CPKC freight corridor.
The idea behind the line is elegant. It would connect three of Metro Vancouver's rapid transit lines, the Canada Line, the Expo Line, and the Millennium and Evergreen lines, without passing through Downtown Vancouver. Today, a trip across the region usually means heading into the core and back out again. The V&LI line is the missing sideways link that removes that detour. And because it runs on a rail corridor that already exists, the most expensive and most contested part of any transit project, a continuous right of way through the city, is already in place.
This is the capstone of my Master's, and in a real sense the capstone of everything the program taught me. The planning, analysis, research, stakeholder, and project management skills I built across two years all converge here, in one team deliverable pointed at one real decision. The full 36-page report is embedded below. The sections around it explain what it set out to do, how we worked, and where I focused.
A feasibility study does not assume a project should go ahead. It tests it. Ours set out to answer one question at a level of detail that could support a full business case: can a light rail service on the V&LI corridor work as a regional bypass, in technical, financial, and operational terms, and if so, should it be built in full, in stages, or only on its strongest segments?
To answer it, the study reviewed the condition of the corridor and all ten station sites, estimated ridership station by station, set out order of magnitude capital and operating costs, compared electric and diesel trains, scoped the consultation owed to five First Nations, screened the regulatory and environmental issues, mapped the risks, screened the funding, and weighed four different ways of building the line.
The finding, in one line: the line is feasible, but not yet funded and not yet decided.
It can be built along the existing corridor, funded at roughly $5.55 billion through a mix of federal, provincial, and private money, and supported by a sound demand case of about 36,000 to 40,000 realistic daily boardings at maturity. But on the evidence, it is not best built as a single full corridor project from the start. The recommended approach is to build it in stages, starting in the west, where the roughly 6,000-home Squamish Nation Senakw development meets the Canada Line and the strongest early demand sits. Across a weighted multi-criteria assessment, that staged, west-first option scored highest. The next step is a full business case on that basis.
What I find most worth highlighting is the study's discipline about uncertainty. Large transport projects have a well-documented habit of underestimating cost and overestimating ridership. So rather than quoting one false-precision number, the report gives two figures for both cost and demand: an inside-view baseline, and a more realistic figure anchored to the actual record of similar projects. That honesty is the reason the recommendation is qualified rather than oversold.