Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[Mac Write]

What's next all 4 VC's just happen to dy of old age all at once?

[DKaz]

Originally Posted by logicbomb

I'm completely ignoring social media. So much stupidity.

I want to see how many riders are lost due to these shutdowns - even when it doesn't inconvenience them. Seems like none of my friends use transit anymore.

We're freeing up capacity for those who don't have a choice. I was affected though last summer, got off work at 5 and didn't get home until 11.

[WarrenC12]

Per BCRTC "a collector shoe on a train made contact with a piece of rail stored on the line"

Emphasis mine.

WTF?

[ssiguy]

Yes it is certainly an inconvenience but people complaining about these delays get me a bit pissed off. To me this is like driving and when there is an accident that stops all traffic flow turning around and blaming it on the road.

Things happen and the priority is to let the people on the trains know what's going on and fixing the problem as soon as possible. People who think that nothing ever goes wrong on a system that carries a million passengers a day better start lowering their expectations and act like adults instead of a bunch of childish kids.

SkyTrain has proven itself to be fast, convenient, safe, and reliable............the hallmarks of great transit but to expect such a system run flawlessly without periodic problems is juvenile,

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Per BCRTC "a collector shoe on a train made contact with a piece of rail stored on the line"

Emphasis mine.

WTF?

No way. That?? There's been pieces of rail there for almost two months now. What the hell changed about them?

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by MIPS

No way. That?? There's been pieces of rail there for almost two months now. What the hell changed about them?

From what I gathered from Jon Woodward's twitter feed, the rail moved in front of the train from the repeated vibrations from trains passing by. It just happened to move in front of the train and hit the power collector. TransLink said it was a million to one shot.

[dreambrother808]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Yes it is certainly an inconvenience but people complaining about these delays get me a bit pissed off. To me this is like driving and when there is an accident that stops all traffic flow turning around and blaming it on the road.

Things happen and the priority is to let the people on the trains know what's going on and fixing the problem as soon as possible. People who think that nothing ever goes wrong on a system that carries a million passengers a day better start lowering their expectations and act like adults instead of a bunch of childish kids.

SkyTrain has proven itself to be fast, convenient, safe, and reliable............the hallmarks of great transit but to expect such a system run flawlessly without periodic problems is juvenile,

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Yes it is certainly an inconvenience but people complaining about these delays get me a bit pissed off. To me this is like driving and when there is an accident that stops all traffic flow turning around and blaming it on the road.

Things happen and the priority is to let the people on the trains know what's going on and fixing the problem as soon as possible. People who think that nothing ever goes wrong on a system that carries a million passengers a day better start lowering their expectations and act like adults instead of a bunch of childish kids.

SkyTrain has proven itself to be fast, convenient, safe, and reliable............the hallmarks of great transit but to expect such a system run flawlessly without periodic problems is juvenile,

I've only ever been on the skytrain once where a an unexpected delay has happened. Driving? Seems like every time. The last time I went with my family, we were delayed by like 3 hours due to a multi-vehicle pileup just before highway 9 at highway 1 turn off, and the traffic on highway 1 was backed up all the way into Abbotsford.

Like the kinds of things that happen with the grade-separated transit system, can be worked around (eg pull more buses into service), because that road access is still available. Surface Light Rail can't do that except in cities that designed their systems parallel to 6-lane highways.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

SkyTrain has proven itself to be fast, convenient, safe, and reliable............the hallmarks of great transit but to expect such a system run flawlessly without periodic problems is juvenile,

Well to play devil's advocate, Skytrain has gotten a lot worse in the reliability department over the last few years.

To me, this just emphasizes the need for the M-Line extension to at least Cambie. That would have provided an alternate route from downtown to the Expo line.

[ssiguy]

Thing that gets me is the people who bitch about the very infrequent breakdown all the same people who would bitch when service is reduced for ongoing repair and maintenance of tracks to make sure incidents like this never happen.

Some kids never grow up.

[xd_1771]

Very disappointed with the cartoon that was put in today's Vancouver Sun regarding this.

Of course the first thing every critic starts to think is that this is SkyTrain technology's fault. i.e. that we never should have invested in this, that it's the root of all our problems - Even though today's investigation shows that to clearly be false. It always has to come down to belittling what is actually a really great transit system. This is the kind of mentality that corrupts regional transit planning and we need to get rid of it.

[Large Cat]

I agree with all of you guys. The regional and news media response to this has been extremely petty and childish. There has been very little mention of the ****show that happened at the Oak and Arthur Laing on Monday when there were crashes on both bridges. Because "accidents" can be blamed on driver error there is very little critique of the highway/road system as a whole, but as soon as Skytrain has an error people start talking like the whole transit system is a piece of crap. The truth is that it's an excellent system, and if it were better (read: adequately) funded it would already have even more redundancy added than was available on Tuesday. Citizens here, even disgruntled transit riders themselves, mount their frustration in ways that are greatly damaging to their own quality of life.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Large Cat

Because "accidents" can be blamed on driver error there is very little critique of the highway/road system as a whole, but as soon as Skytrain has an error people start talking like the whole transit system is a piece of crap.

It's even worse than just inconvenience - the design of the road system results in thousands of deaths every year. Nobody ever talks about that.

[xd_1771]

Incidentally, there was another incident on transit at a nearby city yesterday. A man was struck at the on-street portion of Seattle's Link Light Rail. He was hospitalized in critical condition. The incident closed the LRT line and also blocked surrounding roadways for about 3 hours. From the Twitter reports I was finding, it was at exactly the same time as yesterday's incident here.

SEATTLE — A Sound Transit Link light rail service was interrupted near Martin Luther King Jr. Way and South Edmunds Street. Firefighters extricated a young man trapped under it. [LINK on KIRO 7]

KIRO appears to be the only news that reported on it. So it seems to happen often enough that it's no longer headline news unlike when there's a SkyTrain shutdown here...

No one would really care about that here but whereas our incident yesterday appears to have come down to miscalculation/human error, the incident in Seattle was by design (and could happen anytime...) At least in our case, no one was hurt.

[logicbomb]

Originally Posted by Large Cat

I agree with all of you guys. The regional and news media response to this has been extremely petty and childish. There has been very little mention of the ****show that happened at the Oak and Arthur Laing on Monday when there were crashes on both bridges. Because "accidents" can be blamed on driver error there is very little critique of the highway/road system as a whole, but as soon as Skytrain has an error people start talking like the whole transit system is a piece of crap. The truth is that it's an excellent system, and if it were better (read: adequately) funded it would already have even more redundancy added than was available on Tuesday. Citizens here, even disgruntled transit riders themselves, mount their frustration in ways that are greatly damaging to their own quality of life.

Media sensationalism. This generates ratings. That's all the media cares about. Moreover, they use incidents like these to push forth their agenda. I recall the Vancouver Sun and CTV columnist where talking about privatization being the answer to improving reliability. The worst radio station has to be the Fox 99.3. They have constantly been bashing Translink the past 3 years.

It clearly worked during the plebiscite. The media and the spread of misinformation is why the Broadway Line is still a distant dream.

Yet, no one is outraged at the fact that the SFPR is the way it is. No one cares about the long lines for Patullo. No one bitches about the traffic on Kingsway or Broadway.

[officedweller]

Explanation of the problem CKNW:

• Video Link

[Mac Write]

Man that video is the best. I would love a massive 4hr class on Skytrain video done. it would be so helpful and amazing for us geeks.

[Spork]

Originally Posted by Large Cat

I agree with all of you guys. The regional and news media response to this has been extremely petty and childish. There has been very little mention of the ****show that happened at the Oak and Arthur Laing on Monday when there were crashes on both bridges. Because "accidents" can be blamed on driver error there is very little critique of the highway/road system as a whole, but as soon as Skytrain has an error people start talking like the whole transit system is a piece of crap. The truth is that it's an excellent system, and if it were better (read: adequately) funded it would already have even more redundancy added than was available on Tuesday. Citizens here, even disgruntled transit riders themselves, mount their frustration in ways that are greatly damaging to their own quality of life.

I recommend generally avoiding Global/Vancouver Sun/Province/VancityBuzz where possible. The CBC coverage this evening was refreshingly balanced, bringing in the NDP Translink critic, challenging his assertion that more funding would have avoided the problem, and so forth. Facts, investigation, and no opinion. Perfect.

[Stanford85]

Whenever there's a problem or breakdown on transit, tv media (and Global in particular) love to bring in their go-to guy, the CTF's Jordan Bateman to inform everyone how mismanaged and dysfunctional Translink is. it's a bit disheartening to know that most media outlets out there are mostly after ratings and not interested in digging to find true facts. i never venture onto social media when things like this happen, its just too frustrating to see so many uninformed people posting online.

[MIPS]

I've mentioned a few times that I've repeatedly approached TransLink in regards to the creation of a multi-part series of informative videos or just short clips just to better explain how everything works (and frankly an independent producing this would sure look nice as to avoid a whitewash) but TransLink wants none of it no matter how much I try to water it down to their liking. Even when they could redeem themselves with their annual Open House, normally the only people allowed to visit the OMC are children accompanied by a parent. Everyone else gets to see the bus yards.

It's hard to keep faith in your transit system when they only want to talk about it when things really go south.