Hi, I found this post very useful, so I wanted to share my experience as well (copy and paste from my personal notes)
What:
I needed to get a new work permit (I am on a LMIA closed work permit) as I changed employer.
When:
I went today (Wednesday 15th of August 2018) and I arrived there at 7:20am, following the advice of the immigration lawyer.
There was no queue on either side.
Travel:
From downtown Vancouver I took the skytrain, Canada Line, to Bridgeport. From there I took a combination of buses 601/603/604 (it depends on which one goes to the stop near the crossing) and got out at "EB 1 Ave FS 55A St". Because it’s all TransLink, it’s on the same ticket (on the Compass card).
It took me around one hour and a half to go, and one hour to come back.
From the bus stop to the border it’s barely a two minute walk.
Procedure:
At the US border I went to the left side, it’s clearly indicated by signs for pedestrians/bicycles. When the US agent indicated me to come forward, I showed my passport and told him I wanted to flagpolling. He then took my passport, went inside telling me to wait where I was, and then gave it to me with a stamp on one of the pages that roughly says “US Customs and Borders - Application for Admission Withdrawn - Flagpole”.
I asked him if I have to report this in the future when I’m going to travel to the US and he said yes.
I then walked back to the Canada border (there are footprints and signs here and there to indicate you the path) and when the Canada agent indicated me to come forward, I showed him the stamp on my passport and told him I wanted to apply for a new work permit. He asked me few quick questions (am I carrying weapons, am I carrying a lot of money, am I carrying food or animals, etc) and then gave me a form and told me to walk to the side of the building and go inside the office (“second door not first!”).
In the office I gave passport, form, my application and my current work permit to the agent (there was no queue). He asked me few questions (my current address, where was the office of the new job, etc) and told me to wait.
After 15 minutes (I didn’t keep precise track of time) he called me to a small room where he took photos of me (front, left side, right side) and all my fingerprints (this procedure is very new even to them, so it took him a while to understand the machine and the software and we had to redo some things a couple of time).
Then I went back to the office, another 10/15 minutes wait, and then he gave me my new work permit, giving me also few advices and indications (for example, both work permits are valid and I can still work for the previous company like part time if I want to, also he said I should apply for the PR as soon as possible).
I then paid the fee (which now is $155 for the work permit plus $85 for the biometrics, for a total of $240) with the credit card.
The whole thing took in total 40 minutes.
The Canadian agent was very friendly, he even asked me a couple of question about Italian words while he was waiting for the computer to do its things
