Burnaby Transit Centre turns 30!
Burnaby Transit Centre turns 30!
On November 3, 1986 at 4:35 a.m. bus #5101 was the very first to pass through the gates of the brand new Burnaby Transit Centre.
Who knew that 30 years later, BTC would still be such a hub for our bus fleet?!
This transit centre is made up of a north and south campus and holds fleet overhaul as well as the paint and fabric services for all of CMBC’s buses plus the sign, fare box and bus stop maintenance shops.
Some notable bus routes coming out of BTC are the ever-popular 99 B-line, 43 Joyce/UBC, 135 SFU/Burrard Station and 236 Grouse Mountain/Lonsdale Quay – just to name a few!
BTC is a highlight for I Love Transit week each year as transit ‘campers’ get to explore buses behind the scenes.
To BTC, we wish you a happy 30th birthday and thank all of hard working employees that keep it running and in turn, keep our buses running and serving the transit network!
Author: Adrienne Coling
Did you mean bus #43-Joyce Station/UBC? Or #44-Downtown/UBC?
Ah! Yes! 43…actually the 44 too but I did mean the 43. Edited! Thanks Kelly :)
The seats on the D40LF’s are also fabricated at Burnaby Transit Centre?
Is BTC really 30 years old!? Happy birthday!
At the time it opened, BTC was the future (it opened right after Expo ’86), but that first bus in the photo above looks like something out of the past! It appears to be a Flyer D700, an old workhorse of pre-SkyTrain days, that is a good 3 or 4 generations older than the buses operating today.
For the record, Burnaby wasn’t without a bus depot before 1986. BTC replaced the much older Kensington Transit Centre, which used to be on the south side of Sprott west of Kensington. And the shops moved there from an old garage on Cambie at 12th in Vancouver, where City Square Mall is today.
How the times change!
D’oh–correction! The shops used to be on Cambie just north of *16th*, not 12th. I used to go by there oftentimes on the #15 trolleybus (*long* before the Canada Line), and keep an eye out for exotic buses parked outside, awaiting their repairs or after they’d been fixed up.