A Skytrain travels past the downtown skyline in Vancouver, B.C., on Friday May 22, 2015.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Thousands of passengers across two Lower Mainland cities were stranded and forced to rely on buses Tuesday after a technical glitch knocked an 11-kilometre stretch of the region's SkyTrain light-rail system out of service.
The regional transit authority TransLink eventually blamed the chaos affecting 19 trains on the system timing out as the driverless trains lost communication with the control centre in Burnaby, B.C. TransLink attendents had to walk to the trains and manually drive them into stations. Service was affected along 11 stations between Edmonds and Waterfront Station.
The situation, which began at about 4:20 p.m., was resolved by 7 p.m.
"Any time a large portion of one of the lines goes down, especially during rush hour, it's a major problem," TransLink spokeswoman Anne Drennan said.
Making things worse, some passengers pried open the doors of a train stalled between stations so they could walk to safety. "We do understand that people were getting a little frightened and upset because of the heat," she said. Still, the action complicated efforts to get the system running again.
No injuries were reported, though a pregnant woman on a train had a panic attack. Passenger postings alerted TransLink staff to the situation, so attendants went out to the car to comfort her as the train was moved to a station so she could receive medical attention.
The whole situation Tuesday was reminiscent of a pair of unprecedented shutdowns last year in the light-rail system.
However, the rest of the system was operating along with the Canada Line system linking Richmond, the Vancouver airport and Vancouver.
At Burrard Station in downtown Vancouver, TransLink staff spent the rush hour explaining – and then re-explaining – the situation to a rotating crowd of commuters.
Angela Hickey, 46, who was trying to get home to Surrey, had a difficult time expressing how she felt without cursing. "The whole city relies on this and it's just not acceptable," said Ms. Hickey, who is from England but has lived in Canada for 16 years. "The Tube system is over a hundred years old and it doesn't break down as much as the SkyTrain. When it breaks down, I'm stranded."
Zafer Camdag said his girlfriend commutes on the SkyTrain daily from Surrey, and he "avoids it like the plague" – except for Tuesday, when he found himself downtown trying to get home.
"It's semi-efficient, but it has too many breakdowns," said Mr. Camdag, 54.
Ian Bailey
James Keller