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Waterfront Station (Vancouver)Waterfront Station is a major public transportation facility in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Services Waterfront Station is the downtown Vancouver terminus for the following services: All of the above services—except for HarbourLynx—are operated by TransLink. HeliJet International does not serve Waterfront Station per se, but its helipad is adjacent to the SeaBus terminal and passengers can use the SeaBus's overhead walkway to get to and from Waterfront Station's main terminal building. Location Waterfront Station is located on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, just east of the north foot of Granville Street. The station is within walking distance of Gastown, the Helijet Airways helipad, and the Canada Place cruise ship terminal. History Waterfront Station was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway and was the Pacific terminus for the CPR's transcontinental passenger trains to Montral and Toronto until circa 1979, when VIA Rail took over the railway's passenger operations and rerouted trains to Union Station (now called Pacific Central Station) near False Creek. Waterfront Station's transformation into a public transit facility began in 1977. That year, the SeaBus began operating out of a purpose-built floating pier that was connected to the main terminal building via an overhead walkway above the CPR tracks. The CPR's passenger platforms and some of its tracks were torn up in the early 1980s to make way for the guideway of the SkyTrain, which opened in 1985. A private ferry company, Royal SeaLink Express, ran passenger ferries from a new dock on the west side of the SeaBus terminal to Victoria and Nanaimo in the early 1990s, but ultimately folded. In the mid 1990s, platforms were built adjacent to the SkyTrain station for the new West Coast Express, which uses the existing CPR tracks. (The West Coast Express platforms are in the same location as the old CPR platforms.) In 2003, HarbourLynx began operating out of Royal Sealink's old facility at the SeaBus terminal. Claims to fame Waterfront Station is the home of the first Starbucks outlet in Vancouver, which opened in the 1987 and was one of the first Starbucks locations outside of Seattle, Washington. (Before opening as a Starbucks, the outlet may have been part of the Il Giornale chain owned by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, but the editor cannot recall for certain.)
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