Granville station (SkyTrain)

Granville Station is a SkyTrain station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, served by the Expo and Millennium Lines. The station is located in the Dunsmuir Tunnel located beneath Downtown Vancouver, and opened in 1985.

The station is named for nearby Granville Street, whose name in turn derives from "Granville", the name of the original settlement that preceded Vancouver prior to its incorporation in 1886. The portion of Granville Street on which this station is located is known as the Granville Mall.

Location

Granville Station westbound subway platform with an incoming train.

Granville Station is located in the heart of the Granville Entertainment District which is known for urban shopping, trendy culture and nightlife. The station is accessible from the surface via entrances on Granville or Seymour Streets (between Georgia and Dunsmuir Streets), or underground via Pacific Centre mall, through the Downtown Vancouver premises of the Hudson's Bay Company. Granville Station is the deepest underground station in the SkyTrain system, and access is only by way of three long escalators. In the fall of 2006, elevator access will be introduced from Dunsmuir Street with the completion of the neighbouring Hudson on Granville development.

There is a small store building standing at the bottom of the long escalator where the corridor splits into the westbound and eastbound routes. It held a Shefield & Sons location prior to the summer of 2005, but closed for unknown reasons. This building is currently empty.

Services

Granville Station is one of five SkyTrain stations on the Expo Line serving Downtown Vancouver. It connects with many TransLink bus routes, including trolleybus routes on the Granville Mall, and suburban bus routes (running on nearby Georgia, Howe, and Seymour Streets), heading to and from North and West Vancouver, Richmond (including the 98 B-Line), Delta, Surrey, and White Rock.

Design

The subway platform at Granville Station is one of the busiest in the SkyTrain system.

Like Burrard Station, Granville Station has a distinctive platform design. The westbound track (to Waterfront Station) is stacked on top of the eastbound track (to King George and VCC-Clark Stations), with the westbound platform being one level above the eastbound platform.

Granville Station is unique in having no surface entrance building of its own, independent of any adjacent buildings. The ticketing hall for the Granville Sttaion is located directly under Seymour Street, and the escalators to the platforms run under the Seymour Street allignment. Currently most access to the station is through the Hudson's Bay Company department store, with the entrance on Granville being a full city block from the ticketing hall,while the Seymour Street entrance, however—although physically located inside the same building as the Bay—provides direct access between the street and the station, without requiring passengers to pass through the store. From 2006, a new entrance via The Hudson condominium development will provide a new secondary entrance and ticketing hall on Dunsmuir Street (as mentioned above) which will provide long awaited elevator access to the station platforms.