The Dunsmuir Tunnel is a subway tunnel below Dunsmuir Street in

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, Canada. The tunnel is used by the Expo Line of

Metro Vancouver The Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD), or simply Metro Vancouver, is a Canadian political subdivision and corporate entity representing the metropolitan area of Greater Vancouver, designated by provincial legislation as one of the 28 ...

's SkyTrain rapid transit system. It is located

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

and has Burrard and Granville stations built within the tunnel. The western tunnel portal is located midway between Waterfront and Burrard stations, while the eastern portal is adjacent to Stadium–Chinatown station.

History

The tunnel was originally built by the Northern Construction Company to connect the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...

railyards on

Burrard Inlet french: Baie Burrard , image = Burrard Inlet 201807.jpg , image_size = 250px , alt = , caption = Aerial view of Burrard Inlet , image_bathymetry = Burrard-Inlet-map-en.svg , alt_bathymetry ...

and

False Creek False Creek (french: Faux ruisseau) is a short narrow inlet in the heart of Vancouver, separating the Downtown and West End neighbourhoods from the rest of the city. It is one of the four main bodies of water bordering Vancouver, along with Eng ...

at a cost of $1.6 million. It opened on July 17, 1932, and was built to a height of and a depth of below street level. The tunnel's original east portal was located further south than the current portal, easing trains into the False Creek yards on a gentle southward curve. It was clearly visible until about 2005, where it was almost completely hidden next to an outdoor storage area behind the

Costco Costco Wholesale Corporation (doing business as Costco Wholesale and also known simply as Costco) is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only big-box retail stores (warehouse club). As of 2022, Costco i ...

. The original portal was destroyed in 2011 to make way for a new development, but there remains an abandoned section of tunnel, unused by SkyTrain. The tunnel was taken over by

BC Transit BC Transit is a provincial crown corporation responsible for coordinating the delivery of public transportation within British Columbia, Canada, outside Greater Vancouver. BC Transit is headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia. In , the syst ...

in the early 1980s when the SkyTrain system was built in conjunction with

Expo 86 The 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, or simply Expo 86, was a World's Fair held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from May 2 until October 13, 1986. The fair, the theme of which was "Transportation and Communicatio ...

. Because the tunnel is only wide enough to accommodate a single railway track but with sufficiently high clearance, a superstructure was built inside the tunnel to carry the westbound SkyTrain track above the eastbound track. This results in the two stations within the tunnel having a

split platform A split platform is a station that has a platform for each track, split onto two or more levels. This configuration allows a narrower station plan (or footprint) horizontally, at the expense of a deeper (or higher) vertical elevation, because ...

configuration.

References

External links

Vancouver Tunnels
{{Bridges of Greater Vancouver Expo Line (SkyTrain) Railway tunnels in British Columbia Buildings and structures in Vancouver Tunnels completed in 1932 Tunnels in Greater Vancouver

History

See also

References

External links