SkyTrain passengers faced delays and overcrowding Saturday after a communications system failure resulted in several hours of service disruption across the Expo, Millenium and Canada lines.
Though TransLink worked to provide bus bridges along affected routes and services were restored later in the day, delay and slowdown in service caused inconvenience throughout the day.
TransLink COO Doug Kelsey said it was not clear yet what caused the breakdown in the communication system, but it could have something to do with the software used to manage the automated train control system. The ensuing loss of communication led to the automatic shutdown of trains for safety reasons, he said.
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“Selective trains were losing contact with the central control system. When the communication system breaks down in this manner, the trains automatically move to a shutdown to be safe.”
The incident proved that the safety mechanism was working properly and that was a good thing, said Kelsey. The inconvenience caused to customers as a result, was however was inexcusable, he said.
Though there have been previous service disruptions as a result of normal wear and tear on the “high use system”, this is the first time that such a widespread breakdown in the communications system had taken place and investigation was underway to determine its exact cause, Kelsey said. The transportation authority is also in touch with the software vendor Thales in this regard.
Kelsey denied that the increase in service disruptions had anything to do with budgetary constraints. He said that SkyTrain has been tracking a 95 per cent on time performance through the year – a record that train services across the United States struggle to maintain.
The transportation authority was spending “millions of dollars” on upgrading the system, the stations and adding new cars but “anytime you deal with a complex electronic system, problems are bound to occur,” he said.
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