Socialism

(leftist) government of British Columbia

As a BC resident, I can tell you that BC's government was never "leftist." Then again that word has been mutated in the US and Canada to mean "anything left of hunting the poor for sport."

Rather than build a series of generic, near-identical stations, they hired different architects for various stations, a decision that netted considerable criticism from the opposition.

Extremely valid critism IMO. How many more stations could they have built with the same budget (barring NIMBYs and shit) if they had built the same stations at each location? Transit funding in Canada is pathetic as it is compared to car infrastructure funding, given the choice between nice looking stations and being able to go to more places on the train, I know which I'd choose.

Also, why isn't the same visual astethetic demand applied to car infrastructure? The nicest highway interchange or parking lot still looks like shit compared to the ugliest transit station. Is it because the people designing car infrastructure know how beneficial reusable, utilitarian design is? Is it not conceivable that the way transit designers get burdened by "it can't look ugly" from the NIMBYs who will never not drive anywhere is one of the systemic problems plaguing car oriented countries like Canada?

Also also, the Millennium Line is as much a glamour project as it is a transportation project. It's right in the name, it was the line built in celebration of the millennium. Socialist countries have glamour projects too, and the Millennium Line definitely looks more in line with how those are designed than the average commieblock. I'm not saying that's inherently wrong or that there's never room for astethetics in public infrastructure, but let's not pretend that the Millennium Line stations are better at providing the actual service of transportation because they're all unique. In fact, I'd argue that Sapperton in particular is awful, with its long narrow skybridge leading to the station and the fact that the platforms are separated by stairs. That's been a constant pain during the construction of the new train yard where you often have to switch trains at Sapperton to get to Lougheed. Looks cool yes, not as cool to actually use. Brentwood station straddles a busy stroad and is also not great to use.

Actually, the setup of having individual side platforms on most Skytrain stations is super annoying because you have to leave the platform, go down a flight of stairs, through the main station concourse (sometimes even leave and reenter the fare gated area), and then back up a flight of stairs just to get to the other side. I get that with this configuration you don't have to break the viaduct into two separate ones just to put a platform in the middle, which saves cost, but if they cared about the actual passenger experience, I think whatever money they paid the architects should have went to building more center platform stations where you can just walk over to the other side. The Expo Line mostly used center platforms, the Millennium line seemingly traded that for nice looking stations.

Finally, BC then decided to use cookiecutter stations with only small variations for every expansion project after that. The stations on the Canada Line, Evergreen, and future Broadway and Langley extensions all look pretty much the same and no one really cares because you stop noticing the architecture by the third or fourth commute.

I'd argue that BC's pitiful transit system currently has the same necessity that gave us commieblocks. Maybe we should look to commieblocks for inspiration on how to build quickly and efficiently because we desperately need a ton of new transit infrastructure as soon as possible.