Vancouver 2010 Olympic Line
From January 21 to March 21, 2010, a free demonstration service called the "Olympic Line" (named for the 2010 Winter Olympics) ran on the Downtown Historic Railway, using two modern Bombardier Flexity Outlook streetcars borrowed from the Brussels tramway. The City of Vancouver and the administrators of Granville Island paid $8.5 million for associated upgrades to the infrastructure.
The City considered the streetcar demonstration "a tremendous success", with over 550,000 boardings during the two months of the experiment. Bombardier received an award for "Exceptional Performance and Outstanding Achievement" at the 2010 CUTA awards, recognizing its operation of over 13,000 one-way trips with zero equipment failures, zero station delays and zero injuries. Mayor Robertson has indicated a desire to continue operation of the line, with a potential extension to Main Street - Science World Station via False Creek South, but mentioned that the city alone lacks the millions of dollars needed to complete the construction and equipment purchases. Nonetheless, a streetcar along the alignment used by the Olympic Line was part of two of the proposals for rapid transit running east-west through the city of Vancouver in 2020.
Read more about this topic: Vancouver Downtown Historic Railway
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