Businesses face difficulty amid Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction

After eight months of closures due to SkyTrain construction, a stretch of the Fraser Highway in Surrey, B.C., has partially reopened to traffic, one lane in both directions.

The traffic is now flowing between 140th Street and 96th Avenue.

Gilles Assier, Surrey-Langley SkyTrain executive project director, said full closures were needed because of the work required to build the elevated station platform for the future Green Timbers Station — one of eight new stations along the future 16-kilometre train line.

“This station is very different from the other seven stations,” Assier said.

“Because of the space constraint, it’s going to be built directly on top of Fraser Highway. So we needed to close the road to bring all those heavy cranes, heavy equipment and material.”

The impact has been mostly to traffic this year as the closed section ran through Green Timbers Park.

But farther east on the major route, a barber says the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction work is cutting into business.

WATCH | Business owners feel pinch of SkyTrain extension:

Business owners feeling impact of Surrey-Langley SkyTrain construction

Business owners along the new Skytrain line under construction between Surrey and Langley are saying the ongoing work is impacting their bottom line. But as Kier Junos reports, an important route has recently re-opened to traffic.

“The bottom line — it’s quite different from the start of the SkyTrain,” said Johnnie (Gorgeous) Gorgis, who cuts hair with his brothers at Gorgeous Hair Cut near 152nd Street, the site of another future station.

“Before the SkyTrain, we were actually really busy compared to now … it is not as busy as it was for Christmas time. Times like this, it should have been a lot busier than what we had.”

Gorgis’ concerns are echoed by others. Owners and staff at other shops in the area told CBC News they’re also facing troubles, from fewer sales to a drop in repeat customers.

Similar issues plagued businesses along the Canada Line in Vancouver in the 2000s. Some business owners claimed they’d lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business due to construction of the line between 2005 and 2008.

In 2018, some in Vancouver’s Cambie Village were awarded thousands of dollars in damages after a class-action lawsuit against the builders of the rapid-transit line and TransLink.

While Gorgeous Hair Cuts is still accessible by car, Gorgis isn’t confident the reopening of Fraser Highway west of the shop will improve traffic.

“A lot of clientele actually haven’t been coming back because of the amount of time waiting in the traffic,” said Gorgis.

Project director says work is on schedule

Assier said the project has a mandate to maintain access to businesses along the SkyTrain line during construction, and it’s what the project’s contractor “needs to do.”

“We understand that the public is having some potential challenges due to the construction and traffic,” said Assier. “We’re doing our best to go as fast as we can.”

“We have, now, as part of the foundation of those pillars and columns that will be supporting the elevated guideway — two-thirds of those foundations are already done. And we are almost at 50 per cent of all the columns.”

The new SkyTrain line will run from King George station to the future Langley City Centre Station, costing nearly $6 billion.

Assier said the project is on schedule for completion in 2029.

“Hopefully it’s not going to be longer than that,” said Gorgis. “Because it’s going to affect all the other people around us as well.”