If you’re look­ing for a place to live in Vancouver, hop on the new Canada Line.

This long-​​awaited rapid tran­sit ser­vice that opened for busi­ness this week, link­ing down­town with the air­port and the sub­urb of Richmond, may open up some new hous­ing options.

With sta­tions at Waterfront and in Yaletown, both the Gastown and Yaletown neigh­bor­hoods now have much eas­ier access to tran­sit services.

As the line goes south along Cambie Street, with stops at the new Olympic Village, Broadway, King Edward, Oakridge, Langara College, and Marine Drive, these neigh­bor­hoods, too, now have a speed­ier tran­sit alter­na­tive to the No 15 bus. And while the city of Vancouver is still for­mu­lat­ing its long-​​term devel­op­ment plan for the Cambie cor­ri­dor, lots of res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment already under­way in these areas, par­tic­u­larly at the Olympic Village, Broadway, and Oakridge, means more choices of places to live.

In Richmond, even more res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion around the new Canada Line sta­tions is in the works. According to a recent arti­cle in the Richmond Review:

As soon as engi­neers marked loca­tions for the (station’s) con­crete pil­lars, high-​​rises began to sprout up in Richmond’s City Centre.

By mid-​​2005, when work on the line was just begin­ning, 35 high-​​rise tow­ers were already on the books for down­town Richmond. That num­ber con­tin­ued to swell.…

The Canada Line…prompted city plan­ners to revamp the area plan for City Centre. It pre­dicts the area’s pop­u­la­tion to triple in size, from 41,000 res­i­dents today to 120,000 over the next cen­tury. Most of that growth will be in the next few decades.

So if you’re look­ing for a place to live in Vancouver, hop on the Canada Line. But what the Canada Line cor­ri­dor looks like today may be very dif­fer­ent in the years to come.

Photo cour­tesy of CanadaLine​.com