Vancouver transit line expansion plan worries business owners

Some business owners along Vancouver's busy West Broadway Street are worried they could be in for a rerun of the disruption caused by tunnelling on Cambie Street.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan is pushing for expansion of the Millennium Skytrain line rapid transit project west to Arbutus street.

Sullivan said if the project goes ahead, it likely won't be the sort of "cut-and-cover tunnel" that has been a nightmare for the Cambie neighbourhood because it is located along the Skytrain route.

Martini's Pizza on West Broadway may be four blocks east of the Canada Line construction, but owner Jim Georgas said his family's 31-year old business has felt the impact.

"I think people just avoided the area … because they're [under the mistaken impression] that if they come here, they're not going to be able to get parking and the place is inaccessible and all that — so it did affect us for awhile."

If the expansion proceeds, Sullivan said the rapid transit line would run in a tunnel dug underneath West Broadway.

"The studies that we have now indicate a bored tunnel is the way to go so we wouldn't see the kind of disruption we've seen on Cambie," he said.

Georgas said that's nice to hear. But he recalled what Cambie merchants and homeowners were told before that project started.

"If they were told that and they went back on their word,then who's to say they're not going to do the same along West Broadway?" he said.

Work on the extending the Millennium Line west is likely years away.

But even so, Georgas would like a guarantee West Broadway won't become the next "big dig."