VANCOUVER – A motor issue on one SkyTrain knocked out power to 19 trains on Tuesday, leaving commuters frustrated with having to find another way home.
The outage affected trains running between Waterfront and Royal Oak and lasted about three hours.
Speaking on Wednesday, Translink’s interim CEO Doug Allen said “yesterday’s events are quite significant.”
Attendants were able to get to 15 of the 19 trains within the recommended 20 minute time frame, but Allen said that is not good enough. The trains had to be manually driven to the stations so that passengers could disembark. However, it took until 7 p.m. to resolve the issue and get the system up and running again.
Pictures of the motor on the bottom of the train. There are two motors on each train and one shorted out:
He outlined some changes that need to happen to make sure this kind of outage does not happen again. Staff will be checking the more than 500 induction motors, they will receive more training, will strengthen their control room and look at best practices worldwide. More staff will also be added at stations – 16 people by Aug. 1 and 64 people by Oct. 4.
“Our issue yesterday, in my mind, is that we still don’t have the proper allocation among staff at the stations to be able to respond within 20 minutes,” said Allen.
“Safety is number one with Translink, as it should be, and things were handled within a safe fashion.”
The shutdown came on the heels of another Expo Line issue on May 20 and a freak accident that closed the line on May 22. The back-to-back breakdowns prompted TransLink to reimburse riders for their fares on those days.
READ MORE: TransLink wants to reimburse customers following SkyTrain shutdown in May
Gary McNeill, former Toronto GO Transit president and author of a review of Translink’s two major shutdowns last summer, just happens to be in town and also commented on the situation on Tuesday.
He said he would give the overall response from Translink a ‘C’.
“I think there’s a marked improvement, but as Doug Allen indicated, it’s not good enough,” he said, adding the key to these incidents is how Translink responds.
“If you have someone on the trains you’ll still have problems because you’ll still have the human error,” he said. “That all relates to budgets.”
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