Royal Oak
MetroTown is the second busiest SkyTrain system and was extensively rebuilt with access to the platform expanded for the building of faregates. This project was completed in March 2018 for about $50 million CAN. The station now has three different glassed around fare control areas with faregates at street level beneath the elevated SkyTrain station along Central Blvd. Two of these have wide banks of four escalators down from the ends of the platform. In the middle of the platform the entrance area contains two separate stairs and a bank of THREE elevators between street level and the street below.
A consequence of this rebuilding is the former pedestrian bridge across to the Bus Exchange and Metropolis at Metrotown Shopping Mall (as of 2022, a bustling mall with lots of new Asian shops and not a dead mall) has closed, requiring passengers to cross busy Central Blvd at traffic lights. The former bridge is still intact across Central Blvd simply ending just before the glass walls of the station visible from an escalator. A lot of buses now stop at stops along Central Blvd under the station.
In 2016 when SkyTrain finally locked faregates throughout the system, the station was the only stop on SkyTrain not to have faregates, with customers tapping in and out at temporary readers as the station’s rebuilding continued (including only temporary staircase access with special bus shuttles running for passengers in wheelchairs, and a separate shuttle for passengers with strollers), on March 27, 2017 the first (middle) middle fare control area with 3 elevators opened and the station finally received faregates a year late.
Photos 1-18 October 9, 2011; 19: October 13, 2022; 20-31: October 14, 2022;
