Greater Vancouver Underground
by Sandra McKenzie
The landscape beneath the sidewalk is one that few of us ever get to explore, though much that affects our daily life happens underground. Here is a mole’s eye view of Greater Vancouver.
CPR TUNNEL The Canadian Pacific Railway tunnel, Vancouver’s oldest, was opened in 1932 to eliminate Downtown traffic snarls. It was built by the Northern Construction Company and J.W. Stewart, for $1.6 million. The tunnel is six to 24 metres below the surface and is 1,396 metres in length. It follows an elongated S-curve; starting with the west portal on Burrard Inlet (now the waterfront terminal for SkyTrain), it curves left up Thurlow, and switches back south under Dunsmuir, follows Dunsmuir to Cambie, then curves again almost due south, ending at the east portal near the Georgia Viaduct (now SkyTrain’s stadium station).
Though its original use, as a conduit for the CPR transcontinental trains, is now obsolete, the tunnel needed few alterations to route SkyTrain underground--at the stadium station the original single track was widened to accommodate the SkyTrain’s dual tracks.
CNR TUNNEL Connecting the Second Narrows railway bridge with the Burlington Northern line at Gilmore in Burnaby, this train tunnel is more than 45 metres below the surface, more than three kilometres long, eight metres high and five-and-a-half metres wide.
LONSDALE TUNNEL, North Vancouver Below West Esplanade Avenue, west of Lonsdale in North Vancouver, railroad tracks enter a concrete, box-shaped tunnel that passes under the road. The tunnel was originally under the National Harbours Board jurisdiction but is now B.C. Railway-owned. Built in 1928 it is 500 metres long and runs from St. Andrews Avenue to Chesterfield.
B.C. RAILWAY TUNNEL, Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver Blasted through granite rock right above the Ferry terminal, this single-track tunnel replaced more than three kilometres of existing track and eliminated four curves and a timber trestle over Nelson Creek.
CHINATOWN TUNNELS Extending under Carrall Street and accessed by a winding stairway beneath the Sam Kee Building (the narrowest commercial building in the world) on Pender Street is a tunnel that once held baths, toilets and barber chairs. Other tunnels under Chinatown may once have connected basements.
VANCOUVER HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES CENTRE (12th & Oak Site) More than one-and-a-half kilometres of tunnels deliver services and pedestrian traffic beneath the hospital at 12th and Oak. The first link in the system was built in 1912 to connect laundry services with the hospital complex. There is another kilometre-and-a-half or so of pipe tunnel under the hospital’s floor.
SHAUGHNESSY HOSPITAL Now closed, Shaughnessy Hospital’s service tunnels contained a central steam plant, pressure reducing stations and service stations, a maintenance shop and a power plant. Also underground were oxygen, water and sewage services. A tunnel joined the main building to the acute-care wing and another connected with the Jean Matheson Pavilion.
POST OFFICE TUNNEL Built in the late 1950s the tunnel beneath the main post office was obsolete almost before it was completed. It goes from the former CPR depot on Cordova, via Cordova to Richards, from Richards to Dunsmuir and from Dunsmuir to its gaping entrance in the basement of the post offrce. A two-way conveyor belt carried more than two tonnes of mail per minute from the CPR to the post office. This tunnel, four-and-a-half to 12 metres below the surface and just over two kilometres long, was hand-dug, drilled and blasted (through almost 13 tonnes of sandstone) by Jack Vanim, Art Lemon and their crews at a cost of $1.6 million. Now sealed at its northern (CPR) end, the tunnel was used very briefly before being abandoned.
RESERVOIRS Queen Elizabeth Park under the parking area. Two reservoirs with a total capacity of almost 220 million litres. Vancouver Heights east of Renfrew, north of Hastings. Forty-five million litres, roofed with tennis courts. Central Park on Boundary, between Kingsway and 49th Avenue. Thirty-six million litres. Sasamat University Grounds, south Of 16th Avenue in the treed area. Capacity is 27 million litres. New Westminster at 10th and Coquitlam Streets, two reservoirs with a total capacity of more than 113 million litres. Burnaby Mountain north of Lake City. Almost 14 million litres. Whalley at 104th Avenue and 146th Street. Thirty-five million litres.
WATER Vancouver has 1,458 kilometres of water mains and more than 1,609 kilometres of sewers. Many of the major sewer lines were laid in existing creek beds and, through the magic of gravity, fed into the surrounding bodies of water. At one time all waste and rainwater washed into one sewer. These days raw sewage is conveyed by interceptor sewers to the Iona treatment plant.
STEAM If you see steam rising from a bush on Georgia Street outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, you’re looking at one of the supposedly disguised vents in a network of underground steam pipes delivering climate control services (heat or, in the case of air conditioning, steam absorption), domestic hot water and steam for manufacturing purposes to customers of Central Heat Distribution in the Downtown core. The boiler plant is in the former Pacific Press building on Beatty Street. There are about 10.5 kilomecres of high-pressure steam pipes between five centimetres and 50 centimetres in diameter running anywhere from one to five metres below street surfaces. Central Heat Distribution heats more than 100 buildings in the Downtown, including B.C. Place, General Motors Place, the new library, major hotels and the Ford Centre.
HYDRO Beneath the park designed by architect Bruno Freschi, at Cathedral Square on Dunsmuir Street across from Holy Rosary Cathedral, lies one of B.C. Hydro’s most innovative substations, built to meet long-term electrical load growth. All facilities are fitted below street level in an area measuring 74 metres by 43 metres. A comparable above-ground substation would cover 130 metres by 120 metres. The excavation could hold a six-storey office building.
Power is distributed to customers by underground cables which leave the substation at Richards Street and connect to the existing distribution network via a new duct system. The substation is built for unattended, fully automatic operation. A fibre-optic communications link connects the station to the Dal Grauer substation on Burrard. Six air shafts support the greenhouse-style canopy. There are provisions to extract heated air from the substation and redirect it to enhance plant growth in the park above.
BC GAS BC Gas was formed in 1988 when Inland Natural Gas acquired the mainland natural gas division of B.C. Hydro. By far the largest natural gas utility in the province, it services about 700,000 residential and corporate customers throughout B.C. via 30,000 kilometres of pipeline, running from the Peace River District through the centre of the province. In the Lower Mainland, storage facilities for Liquefied Natural Gas are in Delta. There are 10,189 kilometres of pipeline transporting and distributing natural gas (exclusive of pipes running to individual customers) throughout the Lower Mainland.
BC TEL In 1976 when the Vancouver Book was published, underground telephone wires were a pretty good idea--good enough, in fact, that many municipalities required new services to be buried. In Vancouver there were about 805 kilometres of underground cable 20 years ago. Today there are thousands of kilometres of cables carrying fibre-optics from Vancouver to Victoria to Nanaimo and back, and thousands more connecting Vancouver to the Okanagan and to northern British Columbia, Eastern Canada and the U.S. In fact so much cable has been laid--mostly underground, though some lines are still carried aerially--that the exact number of kilometres isn’t readily determinable.
Locally residents of Concord Pacific Place enjoy security services, environmental control and cable television service thanks to a network of advanced fibre-optics provided by BC Telecom. Eventually, pending federal approval that would allow BC Telecom to hold a broadcast license, B.C. consumers can look forward to interactive video, home-shopping services and more, all brought to us by fibre-optic cables and high-speed satellite communications.
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