Surrey's top mayoral candidates pitch competing SkyTrain, BRT, and LRT visions

Surrey’s top mayoral candidates have offered different visions for the city’s next major rapid transit investments, with proposals ranging from additional SkyTrain extensions to more Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes and a renewed push for street-level Light Rail Transit (LRT).

The differences are particularly pronounced for future rapid transit along the King George Boulevard, where campaigns are taking different approaches to connecting Surrey City Centre, Newton, and South Surrey.

The final opportunity to vote in the civic elections in communities across British Columbia is the main voting day on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026.

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Surrey First mayoral candidate and sitting city councillor Linda Annis favours LRT, while Safe Surrey Coalition mayoral candidate and former longtime mayor Doug McCallum and Conservative Part of Surrey mayoral candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa propose SkyTrain extensions.

Imagine Surrey mayoral candidate, former city councillor, and former BC NDP MLA for the riding of Surrey-Cloverdale Mike Starchuk supports expanding BRT while preparing for future SkyTrain.

These proposals would build on SkyTrain’s Expo Line Surrey-Langley extension, which is currently well under construction along Fraser Highway from the existing King George Station to Langley City Centre. That $6-billion, 16-km-long project with eight stations will reach completion and open in late 2029.

Currently, TransLink is also proposing to build the 19-km-long King George Boulevard BRT line between the Expo Line’s Surrey Central Station and Semiahmoo Town Centre in South Surrey, which would effectively also serve White Rock. The approximate $700-million project would have 12 stations, dedicated bus-only lanes for a significant portion of the route, and traffic signal priority for buses, which would provide a higher standard of service than the existing R1 King George Boulevard RapidBus that it would replace. The end-to-end travel time on Metro Vancouver’s inaugural BRT line is expected to be about 40 minutes during busy periods.

Earlier this week, as part of his re-election campaign for the separate provincial general election on Saturday, Oct. 24, BC NDP leader David Eby announced his administration would pledge $250 million toward covering the cost of building the King George Boulevard BRT, with the assumption that it would leverage additional funding from the federal government. TransLink previously noted that the BRT line could have a construction and implementation timeline of three to five years after funding is fully secured. So far, no funding has been committed to TransLink’s other two BRT projects of the Metrotown-North Shore BRT line and the Langley-Haney Place BRT line.

Incumbent Mayor Brenda Locke of Surrey Connect supports advancing the King George Boulevard BRT project alongside the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension. Earlier this year, Locke’s Surrey Connect-led City Council endorsed the preliminary design concept for the BRT line.

On the other hand, Safe Surrey Connect mayoral candidate Doug McCallum has made extending SkyTrain from Surrey City Centre to Newton one of his central campaign promises. This would be a southward extension connecting Newton with the regional SkyTrain network, with the route following King George Boulevard.

McCallum’s campaign also points to his previous successful push during the 2018 civic election campaign to cancel the Surrey First party’s Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT project in favour of advancing the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension as evidence of his ability to advance major public transit projects.

During the 2018 civic election campaign period, cancelling the highly unpopular Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT in favour of SkyTrain along the Fraser Highway corridor became one of the two main issues of Surrey’s entire election campaign period, with the other issue being the transition from the Surrey RCMP to the municipally-controlled Surrey Police Service. The LRT project was cancelled in late 2018 as one of the first decisions made by McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition-led City Council, with TransLink and the provincial government supporting the decision to pivot to the SkyTrain project soon after in 2019. Led by the provincial government, major construction activities first began in November 2024.

Mayoral candidate Linda Annis of Surrey First is calling for a reconsideration of TransLink’s current BRT proposal. Instead, she wants to pursue street-level LRT from the outset, effectively reviving the cancelled Surrey Newton-Guildford LRT project — a project that her party had spearheaded and advocated for since the early 2010s, when Surrey First controlled City Council.

Annis previously questioned spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bus infrastructure if the corridor could eventually be converted to rail. She argued that a larger initial investment in LRT would provide more capacity and room to accommodate future growth.

Surrey First’s platform also explicitly supports street-level LRT connecting neighbourhoods across the city. They also want improved public transit bus services in Surrey by reassigning vehicles and drivers freed up by the opening of SkyTrain’s Millennium Line Broadway extension and the Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension over the coming years.

Imagine Surrey mayoral candidate Mike Starchuk proposes building a broader BRT network in Surrey, while starting the planning needed for a future SkyTrain extension. The party wants to see three new BRT lines by the end of their first term in 2030: a line on the Scott Road Station-Newton corridor along Scott Road and 72 Avenue (replacing the existing R6 Scott Road RapidBus); a line along 152nd Street from Guildford Town Centre to South Surrey; and TransLink’s current proposal for the King George Boulevard BRT line.

Starchuk is calling for a feasibility study and business case planning for a SkyTrain extension along King George Boulevard from Surrey City Centre to Semiahmoo Town Centre, which is more ambitious than McCallum’s vision of bringing such a SkyTrain extension to Newton, with Starchuk’s proposal going much further south.

Mayoral candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa of the Conservative Party of Surrey also proposes taking SkyTrain farther south, extending the Expo Line from King George Station through Newton to the South Surrey Park & Ride. His platform proposes stations at 88th Avenue and Newton Exchange, with a southern terminus serving the Highway 99 corridor.

Randhawa proposes presenting a business case to TransLink’s Mayors’ Council, pursuing provincial and federal contributions, and supporting the local share with revenues from development around stations.

You might also like:
• Where Vancouver's five leading mayoral candidates stand on extending SkyTrain to UBC
• David Eby's BC NDP commit $250 million toward TransLink's new Bus Rapid Transit line in Surrey
• Cost of TransLink's King George Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit line soars to $700 million
• BC NDP's David Eby says he will not create a new annual TransLink levy of up to $150 on every vehicle in Metro Vancouver
• Surrey mayoral candidate calls for SkyTrain study to South Surrey, more BRT lines
• TransLink seeks public input on long-term plan to improve bus route network in Surrey and Langley
• Surrey needs more east-west TransLink bus routes, says City planner