Vancouver British Columbia - While SkyTrain line extension projects often take the spotlight, the essential infrastructure that keeps Metro Vancouver's growing rail rapid transit network running tends to go unnoticed in the public eye.
 
Currently, the operational needs of SkyTrain's Expo Line and Millennium Line are primarily served by the OMC1 operations and maintenance facility in the Edmonds area of Burnaby.
 
Built as a part of the original Expo Line in the 1980s, OMC1 provides the vast majority of the operations, maintenance, and train storage capacity for the Expo and Millennium lines.
 
In 2021, TransLink began site preparation early works on a much-needed second major operations and maintenance facility, called OMC4.
 
The size of this facility and its importance is comparable to OMC1 in Edmonds.
 
Construction is now well underway on OMC4 at the 27 acre industrial property at 225 North Road, which is situated immediately adjacent to the Expo Line and just northwest of Braid Station.
 
When complete in 2027, OMC4 will be ready just in time for the mass arrival of the majority of the combined orders for 235 new generation Mark V cars, providing 47 fully articulated five-car-long trains for the Expo and Millennium lines, serving as the replacement of the aging Mark I car fleet, general increased capacity for the Expo and Millennium lines, and the additional fleet required for both the Millennium Line's Broadway extension and Expo Line's Surrey-Langley extension, opening in 2027 and 2029, respectively.
 
OMC 4 will have an initial storage and maintenance capacity of 145 cars, which can be expanded to an ultimate capacity of 170 cars.
 
Some upgrades are also being performed to OMC1 to accommodate this new fleet.
 
However, OMC4's latest projected costs have escalated significantly, making it TransLink's most expensive maintenance facility project by a wide margin.
 
As of December 2024, OMC4's total construction cost is now pegged at $1.299 billion.
 
In contrast, the entire 2016 built Evergreen extension of the Millennium Line, which included the small satellite OMC3 facility for mainly overnight train storage needs, cost $1.4 billion ($1.75 billion when adjusted to 2024 dollars).
 
OMC4's costs have fluctuated and escalated drastically from its previous preliminary estimates of $658 million in 2021, $816 million in 2022, and $764 million in 2023, before seeing a 70 percent year-over-year jump for 2024.
 
TransLink told Daily Hive Urbanized that the latest cost estimate for OMC4 is primarily due to the market inflation of materials, labour, and equipment prices, and the changing scope of the facility's design during the planning process.
 
The public transit authority notes that steel material prices alone have gone up by 65 percent over the last 18 months, and there is now additional uncertainty due to potential steel tariffs.
 
One example of a scope change is the complete redesign of the train maintenance bays, which are now sunken into the floor to enable more effective maintenance of the new Mark V trains.
 
Other reasons TransLink cited for the cost escalation include delays in getting third-party permits approved, and higher-than-anticipated construction bids for the facility's buildings and track works.
 
There are also future plans to build the new additional OMC5, another significant operations and maintenance facility on a scale similar to OMC1 and OMC4.
 
As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized, OMC5 will be built on a 37 acre vacant lot previously designated for agricultural uses, situated at the southeast corner of the intersection of Fraser Highway and 176 Street (Pacific Highway), just east of the Serpentine River in North Cloverdale.
 
It will be attached to the Expo Line's Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension, but built as a separate project closely timed with the extension.
 
Recent procurement guides estimate the cost of OMC5 at over $1 billion, and the latest updated cost for OMC4 suggests this likelihood.
 
Combined, OMC4 and OMC5 will likely have a combined cost well north of $2 billion.
 
Not only will both OMC4 and OMC5 facilities significantly increase capacity, but they are also expected to elevate the operational and maintenance performance standards of the SkyTrain network.
 
"This points to the evolution of BCRTC from being a single node company, the node is here at OMC1 in Edmonds, to being a multi-node company.
 
This is one of our big transformations with the future OMC4 in Coquitlam and OMC5 in the South of the Fraser.
 
We'll begin to have different centres of operations where we can be much more nimble in our response to any issues that show up on the line," said Sany Zein, the president and general manager of TransLink's BC Rapid Transit Company, during an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized in Fall 2023.
 
"We extended the Expo Line to Surrey in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we built the Millennium Line, and we built the Evergreen Extension, but we never thought anything more about maintenance facilities, except for OMC3 as a small facility near Inlet Centre Station in Coquitlam. OMC2 in Edmonds was built to assemble trains."
 
Zein deemed the future OMC4 to be their "catch-up depot" that should have been built when the Expo Line was expanded in the 1990s, especially after the opening of the Millennium Line in 2002 and its Evergreen Extension in 2016.
 
Another notable SkyTrain operations project that has seen a major cost escalation is SkyTrain's new state-of-the-art control centre building, which is now in an advanced stage of construction for a 2026 completion.
 
This new control centre facility is being built at OMC2, which is adjacent to OMC1 in Edmonds.
 
When operational, the new control centre will replace the 1980s-built control centre at OMC1, which is under-sized for the ever-expanding network of the Expo and Millennium lines and lacks the latest modern technology for such a critical facility.
 
The new control centre building will now cost $327 million, up from the previous estimate of $110 million in 2021 based on an early design concept.
 
It then escalated to $300 million in 2022 and $327 million in 2023, with no further cost escalation as of December 2024.
 
Explaining the unique circumstances for the new control centre building's cost growth, in addition to the market escalation in construction materials, labour, and equipment prices, TransLink states there have also been big increases for the facility's high-tech equipment, machinery, and software, which supports the major data centre.
 
Since 2021, market prices in Canada have risen by 16 percent for computers and peripherals, 62 percent for power distribution and equipment, and 36 percent for thermal regulation equipment.
 
Furthermore, the average cost escalation for data centre construction increased by 42 percent globally since 2021, with 9 percent from 2024 alone.
 
The public transit authority also told Daily Hive Urbanized the tripling of the new control centre building's cost is also due in part to the project absorbing the costs of other SkyTrain infrastructure improvement projects, including an automatic train control signals project, fibre optic upgrades, security perimeter and guardhouse project, and a parking lot reconfiguration for the OMC2 site.
 
Separately, costs have also escalated for the Expo Line's Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension.
 
In April 2024, the provincial government announced the project's total cost had risen by 50 percent from $4 billion to $6 billion, following the finalization of the project's three major contract awards.
 
Construction is also expected to begin this winter for completion and opening by late 2029, which is a year later than originally anticipated.
 
Costs have also escalated for the project of building the brand-new additional bus depot of the Marpole Transit Centre in South Vancouver, which will be TransLink's first new facility to handle a mass fleet of battery-electric buses.
 
Four years earlier, during the early design stage, the project's cost was pegged at $308 million.
 
As of December 2024, with construction now well underway, the costs have nearly tripled to $848 million.
 
All of this reflects a consistent pattern of public sector projects planned before the sharp inflationary trend beginning in 2022, experiencing significant cost escalations, whether it be for new transportation infrastructure, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, community and recreational centres, schools, and public housing.
 
Kenneth Chan.