Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[st7860]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Sounds like a major skytrain outage this morning. M-Line running from Columbia to VCC and the E line broken up with KG to Edmonds and then Main to Waterfront, no trains between Main and Edmonds. Wonder what the issue is I've heard power rails at Main and I've heard track damage at Joyce.

Skytrain is derped this morning. According to www.twitter.com/translink there are trains running from main to waterfront and shuttle buses elsewhere. Supposedly its the outbound track at main that has a problem.

[WarrenC12]

Power failure on the line between Main and Broadway.

I'm not sure what's worse this morning, that or the closed Highway 1 in Langley (possibly until 4pm).

[Gordon]

Appearantly a communicatons cable between Main & Broadway got damaged.

[TransitFreak]

Oh man, survived that madness. Here's how my day went:
6:30 - arrive at KG, no trains at tail track or platforms...this has me worried...
6:40 - train arrives at KG inbound platform, stays there for a few mins...releases...
6:45 - train still at tail track, finally switches to outbound platform
7:10 - finally reach Scott Road Station - announcements of truncated service begins
7:15 - reach Columbia Station - mass exodus to switch to Millenium train, just make the train
8:05 - finally reach VCC-Clark from Columbia station - hustle down to bridge bus to Main St.
8:20 - bus gets to station...and to torture us more, it turns east at Terminal, loops around the VIA station so that it is on the proper side of the Main Street Station...a guy pulls the cord as it turned away from the station, much to the laughter of a few of us around...
8:32 - train finally departs for downtown - trains packed, and it's a 4-car MKI *yikes*
8:45 - finally arrive at Waterfront Station...

That's right, 2:15 commute, this doesn't include the feeder route I had to take to get to KG...

Can someone please make the executive decision to make power rail replacement a priority please? Like 2 full weekends please...Thanks!

[TransitFreak]

Oh man, wonder if it was one of the ATC cables in between the rails? Wasn't there that issue before as well in that area? Man, wonder if this needs to be addressed somehow...is this vandalism, or the fact that this was the test track back then, so the materials there need to be replaced as they were prototypical...

[nname]

Originally Posted by TransitFreak

Oh man, survived that madness. Here's how my day went:

At least you got to your destination... If there's a SkyTrain disruption or accident on Second Narrow in the PM peak, then there's no way I can get to Coquitlam form Hastings in Burnaby...

This was how it goes one day last summer.. before I learned it the hard way...:
6:20pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
6:30pm 190 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
6:45pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
7:10pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
7:35pm Realized people there had been waiting for the 160 since 4pm
7:40pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
7:45pm Finally give up and hop on a 135 to SFU
8:00pm Arrived at SFU, barely missed the last 143 to Coquitlam Station...

My friend never understand why I don't normally take SkyTrain when they are running properly, but I take them ONLY IF there's a service disruption...

That's said.. there were both SkyTrain disruption AND accident on the Second Narrow this morning

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by TransitFreak

Oh man, wonder if it was one of the ATC cables in between the rails? Wasn't there that issue before as well in that area? Man, wonder if this needs to be addressed somehow...is this vandalism, or the fact that this was the test track back then, so the materials there need to be replaced as they were prototypical...

The latest report is that a mistake was made as a part of the ongoing power rail replacement project.

[MIPS]

CBC says that the rail had been improperly reinstalled last night and this morning when a train went over the brushes snagged and got pulled off the train, mangling the leaky coax in the process.

If I recall that last time we had a problem with the ATC on that stretch it was because someone threw a piece of rebar up on the track.

[deasine]

Originally Posted by nname

6:20pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
6:30pm 190 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
6:45pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"
7:10pm 160 goes by "Sorry Bus Full"

To think, this is the snapshot of 49-users between Victoria to Main during the morning rush.

[nname]

Originally Posted by MIPS

CBC says that the rail had been improperly reinstalled last night and this morning when a train went over the brushes snagged and got pulled off the train, mangling the leaky coax in the process.

If I recall that last time we had a problem with the ATC on that stretch it was because someone threw a piece of rebar up on the track.

But I thought for the power rail replacement, they are still working on the segment between Metrotown and Joyce? The incident happened near Main.. Or.. is it caused by the Main Street station upgrade?

Originally Posted by deasine

To think, this is the snapshot of 49-users between Victoria to Main during the morning rush.

Except the 49 doesn't run every 30min, and we don't need to wait for 5 hours well into the evening for the first non-full bus (I hope!)

[Mac Write]

Why do I always miss all the fun and games. Would have loved to have ridden SkyTrain this morning to check out all the mayhem.

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by nname

But I thought for the power rail replacement, they are still working on the segment between Metrotown and Joyce? The incident happened near Main.. Or.. is it caused by the Main Street station upgrade?

I was confused by this too. Last I saw they're still a while away from reaching that span. Perhaps they were doing an emergency fix or something to hold them over until the new rail was fitted?

Edited: Heads up.
Emergency track maintenance scheduled tonight after shutdown for the Terminal Avenue right-of-way.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by TransitFreak

Oh man, survived that madness. Here's how my day went:
6:30 - arrive at KG, no trains at tail track or platforms...this has me worried...
6:40 - train arrives at KG inbound platform, stays there for a few mins...releases...
6:45 - train still at tail track, finally switches to outbound platform
7:10 - finally reach Scott Road Station - announcements of truncated service begins
7:15 - reach Columbia Station - mass exodus to switch to Millenium train, just make the train
8:05 - finally reach VCC-Clark from Columbia station - hustle down to bridge bus to Main St.
8:20 - bus gets to station...and to torture us more, it turns east at Terminal, loops around the VIA station so that it is on the proper side of the Main Street Station...a guy pulls the cord as it turned away from the station, much to the laughter of a few of us around...
8:32 - train finally departs for downtown - trains packed, and it's a 4-car MKI *yikes*
8:45 - finally arrive at Waterfront Station...

That's right, 2:15 commute, this doesn't include the feeder route I had to take to get to KG...

Can someone please make the executive decision to make power rail replacement a priority please? Like 2 full weekends please...Thanks!

That's as bad as mine.

Arrive at Scott Road at 7:15 to find a full platform. Wait a few minutes and the first full train goes by with no room, then a second, and finally get on a third at 7:35. In all that time they didn't have one single announcement. Go past Columbia, some people get off, and I finally hear an announcement at around 22nd Street. Get to Edmonds where we have to unload for the shuttle train. The other platform is packed, the overtrack walkway is packed, and the platform on our side is packed.

I hear someone on a bullhorn shout out that there are 3 shuttle trains:
Edmonds - Metrotown
Metrotown - Nanaimo
Nanaimo - Main Street

The line is not moving, no trains in sight so I hop back on and head to Columbia. I basically cut the line that goes out the door onto Columbia street by getting off the train and wait on the platform (by this time I've been on my faresaver for 45 minutes). Wait at the Columbia platform for 15 minutes while the Millennium line bound train sits in the tunnel (between Columbia and New West) the whole time.

The Millennium line train finally leaves at 8:30, completely full, and arrives at each station, with full platforms (because the last M line train went by at least 20 minutes earlier), and dwells at each one for around 5 minutes. THE ENTIRE WAY TO COMMERCIAL. At each station the train would dwell between 2 and 10 minutes (10 minute dwell at Production Way).

Finally reach Commercial drive station at 9:20, get on a B-line and make it to central Broadway at 9:35.

I understand it was a horrible day, but why does the Millennium line get so screwed up? It should be able to keep up a reasonable schedule and shuttle passengers around. If the Millennium line trains weren't 15 minutes apart and took an hour to do Columbia-VCC, this would not have been a total disaster.

The train, while short turning just sat in the tunnel! It didn't need to wait for any trains to clear Columbia, there weren't any there. It just sat there holding up the whole system.

[DKaz]

I had little desire to stand for 2+ hours so I drove to work today. Roads were very busy as many people thought the same thing. Normally takes me 70 minutes to drive to work, took an hour 40 minutes today, for what's normally a 45 minute Skytrain ride.

[nname]

I guess they need time to re-program each train? Although I recall hearing a disruption on the scanner earlier this year - they pretty much had to manually or semi-manually control the trains during a service disruption, at least during the early stage of it - maybe that's why they stopped for a long time.

Interestingly, I got to Braid at 9:45am and Gilmore at 10:00am. Everything just seems perfectly normal - the train and platforms are all pretty quiet with only about 30% of seats occupied, and the dwell times are normal - just like a typical day at 10am... If it weren't for the announcement every 2 minutes, I don't think anyone would've guessed there's disruption on the Expo Line without knowing it beforehand...

I guess leaving home 50min late really did paid off.. I actually saved 10 minutes in the commute today...

[MIPS]

Could they of not just dispatched all hands to the trains and ran manually until they had the crowds under control, then re-enter each train and return to auto once they had the computer settled down and the short-term fix in place?

It's a dirty way of doing it but as seen from The Vancouver Sun the entire system was completely overwhelmed and the computer had lost its marbles.

[Millennium2002]

The downtime I think was a result of an original flaw in network design rather than in the computers themselves.

You see, all the Millennium Line trains were short-turned at Columbia during the incident via a switch on the main line.

As you can probably imagine, trying to switch these trains around while maintaining any level of rush hour service on both lines is quite difficult. I mean, once a train decides to switch, it will inevitably block both lanes for about three minutes (includes time waiting at platforms + clearing people out of train, etc).

Besides that, I noticed a few other things during the tail end of the incident:
- A small number of trains were kept at OMC in storage... maybe due to end of rush hour, but maybe also to reduce complexity (more trains = more complex scheduling that can go wrong)
- A number of trains bunched up such that service appeared to go like 2 minutes per train for a few trains and then a 8 minute wait for the next one

[dpogue]

I believe the manual driving during the incident yesterday was for trains on the outbound track between Main St and Edmonds. It sounds a bit like when the problem started, the computer lost position of all outbound trains and stopped them all in-place. They would have needed to be manually driven to the nearest station, and then moved somewhere out of the way. This was complicated even more by the power rail issues that had most of the guideway with no electricity.

When I was at Braid around 8:30, the number and spacing of trains seemed normal, but they were all packed with people trying to avoid the Expo line. Dwell was a bit longer, presumably in an effort to get as many people on board as possible.

As for pulling trains out of service, when there's single tracking involved, you want as few trains as possible in the area. More trains means more things potentially blocking other trains and dealing with switch delays.
I also recall hearing that when there's a problem requiring them to pull trains out of service, BCRTC isn't allowed to put other trains back into service without getting authorization from TransLink. There's a quota of trains that can operate on a given day, and going over that quota needs approval.

[officedweller]

A special issue on transit in Input – the magazine of the Real Estate Institute of BC - found the link through PriceTags:

http://www.reibc.org/_Library/Input_Magazine/Input_Fall_2013_for_web.pdf

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

Why do I always miss all the fun and games. Would have loved to have ridden SkyTrain this morning to check out all the mayhem.

I happened to catch a Nattering Ninny on the 6PM news.
'I've had four transfers, and now I'm stuck here and now have to WALK to 200 Granville to get to work'

NN was at Main station, so any of the buses to downtown would get her to Granville / Pender or Granville / Hastings.
Some of the buses even say [ DOWNTOWN ] on their signs.
Faster than walking.

I was taught to know two alternate ways to get to your usual destination when your usual service isn't available.