VANCOUVER – Convening on the contentious issue of expanding Vancouver’s SkyTrain line west to UBC, the Vancouver city council has instead voted unanimously to extend the SkyTrain vertically into its resplendent blue namesake.
In a meeting on Wednesday, the Mayor and council voted 11-0 (against the emphatic pleas of city engineer Jerry Dobrovolny) to invest over 45 billion dollars in the reconstruction of the entire existing SkyTrain infrastructure so that it might more accurately live up to its catchy title.
“Since its construction for Expo 86 back in, what, the seventies?” Mayor Kennedy Stewart began to orate to reporters. “The SkyTrain has always trafficked in the imagery of futurism and lofty, fancy dream technologies. But how disappointing for your average commuter when they realize that this gleaming sky chariot spends most of its time underground? Well, no more!”
With a flourish, the Mayor directed reporters’ attention away from city engineer Jerry Dobrovolny (still weeping quietly nearby) and toward an elaborate concept poster of the SkyTrain’s familiar concrete monorail track, extending in a structurally impractical manner well into the clouds above Vancouver’s mountain skyline.
“Behold,” the Mayor declared, “the future of our city. The future of Canada. Because the sky…is truly the limit.”
When reporters raised questions about whether this elaborate new project would allow students to travel to UBC, the Mayor smiled quizzically and said, “In the skyways of tomorrow, the birds are our students, and the sun is our teacher,” which everyone agreed was a very Vancouver-y thing to say.