Ottawa’s Trillium, often mistakenly called LRT by the media is actually a DMU operation, using existing railway right-of-ways. In fact, the Trillium Line is in no way connected to Ottawa’s troubled hybrid light metro/rail system.
The Trillium Line is a single track, with three passing sidings on dedicated rights-of-way shared with Ottawa Central freight trains south of Walkley Yard, which occasionally serve the National Research Council of Canada‘s Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centre. Despite being a local public transit line, it is actually a federally regulated mainline railway and operated under the official name “Capital Railway”, which appears on the trains in addition to the service’s logo. All stations except Carleton have single platforms.
Between 2013 and 2015, the line was upgraded and its fleet replaced, cutting wait times during peak periods from 15 minutes to 12 minutes.
On May 3, 2020, the line was shut down for a three-year upgrade and expansion project, which will add eight stations and 16 kilometres (10 mi) of track, including a spur to Macdonald–Cartier International Airport. During its closure, service along the line is being provided by buses. The upgraded and expanded line is expected to reopen in 2023.
The concept of the Trillium Line is what is needed for badly needed improved public and regional transit in BC. Cheaper rail solutions are paramount if BC is to deal with global Warming and climate change as the taxpayer cannot afford the SkyTrain light-metro solution.. The failure of the current government and metro Vancouver city governments to invest in more affordable rail solutions, such as DMU’s using existing rail corridors and track share with mainline railways will leave the region with permanent traffic congestion and gridlock as the the current rapid transit system has failed to achieve any modal shift on any of the routes where light metro operates.
The failure to attract the the motorist from the car has not been unnoticed abroad as no one has copied the Vancouver model of light metro only operation.
As the next phase of the defining transit project of his mayoral career comes together, Mayor Jim Watson shared his “great confidence” that the O-Train south extension “will not see the kind of challenges we’ve seen in the first stage of the Confederation Line.”Watson spoke to this newspaper after the Friday unveiling of the new Trillium Line fleet: seven Stadler FLIRT trains that will service the extended line stretching from Bayview Station to Limebank Road in Riverside South. The old Alstom Cordia LINT trains, used on the Trillium Line before its closure in 2020 for Stage 2 construction, will run along the new airport spur.Watson said his confidence came from the different technology for the southern O-Train branch; unlike the electrified Confederation Line, the Trillium Line is diesel-powered, with the potential for conversion in the future. It’s also being built on a system that has worked well for two decades.However, Watson added, “At the end of the day, it will be seeing is believing … People will not take our word until the trains are out, they’re working properly, they’re reliable. And that’s ultimately our objective.”
Ottawans have already had to digest disappointment that their new Trillium Line was running nine months and then a year behind its contracted completion date of August 2022. It’s to be the first finished of the three rail extensions that make up the Stage 2 project. The next update will come at a September meeting of council’s finance and economic development committee.
An interior view of one of the new fleet of light-rail trains unveiled at the maintenance and storage facility for O-Train South Extension on Friday.Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
It’s also one of the companies in the Rideau Transit Group consortium behind LRT Stage 1, also known as the Confederation Line. The extension of this line to the east and west by Kiewit and Vinci makes up the remainder of the $4.6-billion Stage 2 project funded by the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
Alongside Swiss chocolate, courtesy of Stadler, fodder for optimism was dispensed Friday.All seven trains have arrived, testing has begun and both station construction and installation of track are “progressing well” along the extended Trillium Line, said Michael Morgan, the city’s rail construction program director. Stretching 80 metres and capable of holding 420 passengers, the Stadler trains are twice as long and double the capacity of their Trillium Line predecessors.“Fantastic vehicle. It’s been working great,” Morgan said. “We’ve had no issues since we started the testing.”They’re looking to have the full track and signal system available end-to-end by the year’s conclusion, allowing winter testing in December, January, and February. But they’re not expecting problems with the trains’ performance in cold conditions, Morgan added.As the mayor did, Morgan focused on key differences between the Trillium and Confederation Lines when asked about the potential for problems like those riders encountered with LRT Stage 1.“The Trillium Line’s a different technology, it’s a different system, we’re starting from a different base. We already have a number of vehicles that work today. We have seven new vehicles that will come, they’re ready to go, they’re ready a year in advance of the opening … We’re quite confident that the different technology, the different systems are going to make a huge impact in terms of how the system operates.”As Stage 2 work continues in the south, east and west, an independent commission probing the problem-plagued first phase of LRT in Ottawa will prepare a final report with recommendations to prevent future system failures. Following weeks of hearings and countless pages of publicly accessible evidence submissions, the report is due by Aug. 31, but the deadline could be pushed to Nov. 30 with approval of Ontario’s transportation minister.
Mayor Jim Watson and Coun. Allan Hubley, chair of the transit commission, assess the interior of one of the new fleet of light-trail train cars.Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
Transit commission chair Allan Hubley said Friday that he’d welcomed the public inquiry from its outset, noting its distinction from a judicial inquiry, which council ultimately voted against pursuing and could have cost the city millions and taken years.
“The public inquiry was great because it’s focused on a couple of key issues and we’re expecting a report by the end of August, which is really good turnaround because we want to action whatever comes out of that report,” Hubley said. “We want to make sure that we do it, whatever they recommend with the train.”
Hubley said he also found it heartening to see “the number of experts that said that we did the right thing, that, you know, changing the testing criteria didn’t make that big a difference … 98 to 96 wasn’t a big game-changer.”
“I remember at the time it being discussed that … you’d go from a 3.5- to a five-minute wait time,” Hubley said.
“I compared that to 15 minutes waiting for a bus and thought, ‘You know, people aren’t going to be that much upset over it.’”
Stretching 80 metres and capable of holding 420 passengers, the Stadler trains are twice as long and double the capacity of their Trillium Line predecessors.Photo by Tony Caldwell /Postmedia
I have reprinted this story from the LRTA’s February’s issue Light Rail and Urban Transport to illustrate the cost of a modern European style tramway (LRT).
The 13.4 km Limmattalbahn cost €607 million or CAD $884 million or about $65 million a kilometre to build!
Compare this with $4.6 t0 $5 billion or 287.5 per km. for the 16 km extension of the Expo Line to Langley!
A modern tramway in today’s money costs four and half times less than a light metro, yet the tramway could, if pushed offer a higher capacity if needed.
And the SkyTrain Lobby fails to understand why no one builds with SkyTrain light metro!
Want to know more about modern light rail?
Join the Light Rail Transit Association at www.lrta.org and be up to date with modern public transport!
Limmattalbahn
Switzerland’s newest tramway
Delivered 20% under budget, Zürich’s Limmattalbahn is inaugurated for Europe’s timetable change
December’s Europe-wide timetable change saw inauguration of thenew Limmattalbahn.
* Opened with celebrations and free travel on 10 December – with regular service from 11 December – the 13.4km (8.3-mile) metre- gauge line links Bahnhof Altstetten in the western suburbsof Zürich with communities in the Limmat Valley. There are 27 stops serving Farbhof, Schlieren, Urdorf, Dietikon and Killwangen (the western terminus).
* Track-sharing takes place with the VBZ tram network (line 2) in Zürich between Farbhof and Schlieren, and at Dietikon with the Bremgarten – Dietikon Bahn (BDWM). The line’s depot is atMüsli (near Kreuzäcker stop), next to a railway marshalling yard.
* The Limmat Valley has always been a significant transport corridor; the first Swiss railway (theSpanisch-Brötli-Bahn)ran here from 1847. With a highway network at capacity and 113 000additional journeys per day expected by 2030, plans for the new public transport connection were endorsed in a November 2015 referendum.
* From Altstetten to Schlieren the line is electrified at 600V dc for compatibility with VBZ trams, while further west the line voltageis powered at 1200V dc (the same as BDWM). A 15-minute service is provided by eight double-ended StadlerTramlinkLRVs; each 44.3m-long, 2.4m-wide car can carry 260 passengers, 88 seated. Aargau Verkehr holds an option for eight more of the seven-section trams, which would permit a 7.5-minute service as traffic develops. End-to-end journey time is 38 minutes. The trams were part of a joint order with Baselland Transport for there-gauged Waldenburgerbahn, which re-opened to passengers on the same day (see below).
* Test running started in July 2022. The total cost of the project was around CHF600m (EUR607m), less than the budgeted CHF755m/ EUR766m), with one third met by the Federal Government and 50% by the Canton Zürich.
* An extension beyond the current western terminus is proposed, but is yet to progress beyond the planning stage. The earlier Limmattal- Strassenbahn ran trams from Zürich to Dietikon until 1930.
* A feature on the Limmattalbahn will appear in the next TAUT.
Vested interests: Reason for involvement in an undertaking or situation, especially an expectation of financial or other gain.
Vested interests is the real reason for transit planning in metro Vancouver.
It is also the reason why the SkyTrain Lobby is so powerful because they are the useful idiots of vested interests.
Harsh words indeed.
Despite the local hype and hoopla, Metro Vancouver’s continued transit expansion centered on light metro certainly does not benefit transit riders. as mode share for people using transit is slowly eroding with higher ridership numbers attributed to steady population growth in metro Vancouver.
The following graph illustrates the steady erosion of transit customers and this is pre Covid.
Metro Vancouver Mode Share 2017
In Vancouver the vested interest wanting light metro construction is the bike and auto lobbies; engineering companies; cement manufacturers; land developers/speculators: and politicians, each with expectations in financial, politcal or other gains.
What is missing, especially in the age of climate change and global warming, is an affordable alternative to the car.
Those who regularly support extending SkyTrain light metro, remain blind and deaf to the the many issues pertaining to light metro construction and light metro operation. Most do not have the faintest idea about transit and transit mode and bleat in unison, like Orwell’s sheep, “SkyTrain good, LRT bad”. The SkyTrain Lobby love to cherry pick information to suit their cause but the one question they continually ignore is:
Why, after being on the market for 45 years, only seven Movia Automatic Light Metro systems (a proprietary light metro that now has had four owners) have been built?
In an era of unprecedented investment in public transit, the proprietary MALM system has failed to find a market and is avoided as a dated light metro system with no advantages in operation when compared to much cheaper light rail.
Again, who has copied Vancouver’s P-3 Canada Line?
The Caisse du Depot (one of the concessionaires of the P-3 Canada Line) of Quebec saw how easy it was to make sizable profits from dishonest politicians and uninformed taxpayers by building Montreal’s P-3 REM light metro.
It seems the vested interests want more SkyTrain light metro, eagerly to drain the taxpayer of even more scarce amounts of income in the form of increased taxes and subsidies.
This is the very sad legacy of Metro Vancouver’s regional transportation planning, the vested interests continue to make huge profits from the rubes who have failed to ask questions and demand oversight of transit planning and operation.
As Barnum observed; “There is a sucker born every minute” and the vested interests just love suckers.
The following news story reminds me of the Cambie St. subway fiasco with the Canada line subway.
Fake tears from the city of Vancouver politicians, TransLink and the provincial NDP masquerade the fact that they knew this was going to happen and they do not give a damn about the merchants involved.
On the local TV last night, small businesses along the Broadway construction zone are seeing huge drop in sales and a big increase in debt, due to closure of sidewalks.
Shades of the Canada Line debacle on Cambie 15 years ago!
BC’s Transportation Minister Ian Flemming, trundled out the old tried and true comment from the Canada Line days” that profits will return many fold as stated in the business case, after completion”.
Sorry, that maybe true for a surface light rail line, but not for a subway because subways tend to do the opposite and sterilize surface businesses between subway stations!
Just more politcal BS, justifying the BS Line!
From August 2021.
An interesting passage from Steve Munro’s critique of Neptis, which I was reading to gain some insight into the organization, in response to Mr. Burgess’s comment.
Towards the end of this lengthy report, this paragraph stood out.
The whole point of Transit City was to provide improved local, trunk services and to remain on the surface wherever possible to minimize capital costs while avoiding the sterilization of between-station areas with the wide spacing typically found on subway projects.
Let me restate the point of concern.
………. (transit is) to remain on the surface wherever possible to minimize capital costs while avoiding the sterilization of between-station areas with the wide spacing typically found on subway projects.
So now the truth come out, the Broadway subway will sterilize surface business’s along Broadway, between the subway stations.
This contrary to what TransLink and the Mayor of Vancouver is saying! This contrary to hosannas being sung about the subway by the Daily hive and the rest of the mainstream media.
The Broadway subway will harm surface businesses and the City of Vancouver and TransLink are cowards for not telling merchants the truth, that the Broadway subway will sterilize Broadway!
Rail for the Valley’s goal is the reintroduction of a modern Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban service, using the former and still in use, BC Electric route.
This route would provide good rail communication for Vancouver, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, the burgeoning communities of Vedder/Sardis and finally Chilliwack, with regularly scheduled regional rail service. 15 years ago RftV naively thought that a TramTrain service would be ideal. Soon the realization that ossified bureaucracies and equally ossified politicians could not or would not see 20 minutes into the future and doubled down on more SkyTrain light metro construction. Instead, RftV opted for light Diesel Multiple Unit’s(DMU’s) instead of TramTrains.
The Leewood Study estimate for such an “interurban service was around $1 billion and today, with inflation, the cost would be around $1.5 billion for the 130 km route. This cost compares very favourably with the current estimate of about $11 billion to extend the Expo and millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km!
Simply put, a TramTrain is a modern tram or streetcar, so designed it can operate on the mainline railway, thus able to give a transit customer a premium service that a bus or commuter train or a light metro cannot give.
A TramTrain serving Paris.
The concept of the TramTrain, explodes so many local myths about trams and LRT that the powers that be just ignore the mode.
Today, there are 26 TramTrain operations around the world, with an additional 30 more in various stages of planning.
TramTrain would be an ideal transit alternative not only for the Fraser Valley, but for Vancouver Island and the ever growing Okanagan region.
All three mentioned BC locations could see over 400 km or rail transit in the form of TramTrain built and installed at less cost than the $11 billion for a mere 21.7 km of SkyTrain light metro.
It seems trouble is brewing on Broadway and for the sixth time since Jan.1 a media outlet has repeated the TransLink and City of Vancouver’s nonsense that Broadway is the busiest transit route in North America.
Well it isn’t and never was and my guess is that TransLink, the provincial NDP and the CoV are softening up the taxpayer for some bad fiscal news about the now $2.7 billion, 5.7 km Broadway Subway.
Posted by zweisystem on Thursday, February 28, 2019
For the past several years, the SkyTrain Lobby, politicians and academics have all said, almost in unison, that Broadway was the busiest transit corridor in Canada, if not North America.
The old Joseph Goebbels quote is true; “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Thus for the past several years the big Broadway lie, enabled by TransLink has ingrained the notion that Broadway is the most heavily transit route in Canada.
Fact Check!
In a letter to several news organizations, all metro mayors and other interested parties, I laid the foundation that Broadway was not the busiest transit route in Canada .
Stung by this, TransLink wrote a letter to myself and in a round about way claimed that Broadway “is our region’s most overcrowded bus route.”
No apology and not even a hint of remorse, TransLink continues to boast about Broadway!
Finally, on January 31, 2019, you contacted several news organizations and this Secretariat raising concerns over TransLink’s assertion that the 99 B-Line is the busiest bus route in the US and Canada. TransLink is confident in its data collection and peer comparisons, noting that the 99 B-Line route on the Broadway Corridor moves 60,000 customers per day on articulated buses running every three minutes at peak times. This is our region’s most overcrowded bus route. Pass ups are already common, as our regular riders on that route are fully aware. TransLink projects that the 99 B-Line from Arbutus to UBC will be at capacity in the peak when the Millennium Line extension from Commercial-Broadway to Arbutus opens.
Just a minor footnote, according to TransLink the 99B moves about 60,000 customers a day, but of course that is both ways, as TransLink slyly tries to once again inflate the real ridership on Broadway.
Why?
The big prize is the now $3.5 billion Broadway SkyTrain subway to Arbutus and TransLink does not want the truth to upset the subway bulldozer!
After receiving a number of abusive amount of Emails about the post (all deleted), has indicated to me that most people do not have a firm grounding in modern public transport philosophy, nor a good knowledge of provincial finances. Most forget, that in the end, both LRT and light metro are trains and there is only one taxpayer.
Many Vancouver Island rail advocates firmly believe that Vancouver Island is financed separately from the Province of BC, which is pure rubbish.
Very few people understand that $11 billion needed to finance a 21.7 km extension to the Expo and Millennium Lines 21.7 km in Metro Vancouver is one of the main reasons the province has ignored the plight of the E&N and of course RftV’s Valley rail project.
People don’t realize today that the Expo Line (the name SkyTrain was chosen by a public contest on a local radio station) was built strictly for politcal purposes by the then Social Credit government, using the proprietary Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT) system, renamed from the original Intermediate Capacity Transit System ICTS), which was unmarketable.. Each extension of the Expo line was designed to fit in the Social Credit’s three to four year election cycle.
Photo-ops and 10 second sound bites for electioneering were more important than a sound regional transit plan.
When the NDP were in power in the 90’s, they too understood the power of rapid transit and forced the Millennium Line using Bombardiers completely rebuilt ALRT/ICTS system, which they called Advanced Rapid Transit. To help sell this almost unsalable proprietary railway, the NDP contrived a report claiming that the only reason to build rapid transit was for land use purposes or in other words, rapid transit (SkyTrain) would be a driver for land development.
Subsequent provincial and civic politicians jumped on the development and densification band wagon and with that came the land speculators and higher property values. With higher property values came increased taxes and as taxes increased, rents and leases also increased. Fueled by illegal money laundering, from local casinos and compliant politicians, a modern day land rush was created where land speculators assemble lands along present and future rapid transit routes, then made handsome profits selling the land to land developers, who then induced local politicians to allow even higher densities, allowing bigger profits.
Today, Metro Vancouver is fast becoming unlivable, with basic housing being unaffordable: tent cities along main thoroughfares: drug induced death rate, almost unsurpassed in North America and endemic traffic congestion in the region.
What went wrong?
There is no simple answer, except that politicians just love those photo-ops and 10 second sound bites for the evening news in front of SkyTrain guideways, that rapid transit will solve our transportation woes; our housing woes; and generally anything else that sounds good in the media.
Thus politicians keep demanding the same thing be done, over and over again and spending obscene amounts of money, building small rapid transit extensions that have proven to do the opposite of what was promiced.
This reminds me of the of the Hans Christian Anderson’s fable, the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.
Finally, the weavers report that the emperor’s suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although startled, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.
Like the fable The Emperor’s New Clothes, doing the same thing over and over again, by building more SkyTrain light-metro lines ever hoping for different results, has gutted the province’s ability to fund other and intentionally better transit projects in the province.
Like the fable, the vain emperor or premier (city mayors as well) walk the streets naked, proud at achieving nothing. TransLink and provincial transportation strategies are equally naked, reduced to doing the same thing over again, hoping for different results.
How many deaths must happen before the province decides to have a regional rail strategy?
The message was tragically brought home to roost Christmas Eve with the fatal bus crash on highway 97C, the Okanagon Connector, where a intercity bus crash claimed four lives, that the province desperately needs a regional transportation strategy.
The provincial government, despite promises to the contrary, have not acted and in fact, seem to be retreating from any provincial transportation strategy.
With foul weather shifting to once every 100 of 50 year events, with global warming and climate change, are now becoming almost annual events yet all level of governments seem to be ossified in planning, where inaction and myopia seems to be the only plan.
Last weeks transportation chaos which saw Vancouver International airport reduced to a shambles; public transit collapsed; two major bridges (Alex Fraser and Port Mann) closed due to falling ice and finally a tragic bus accident on the eve of Christmas are the shape of things to come.
BC and Canada’s love affair with “rubber on asphalt” transportation solutions must end and investment instead go to a national regional rail strategy. The anti-rail bias is striking and rail investment is based on an electability standard of what project’s photo-ops and 10 second sound bites on the evening news which will provide the more votes!
The province is spending $11 billion, extending the Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain light metro system a mere 21.7 km; a system that has proven over and over again that it does not operate well or at all in snow. By comparison, the Rail for the Valley/Leewood Study regional rail plan would cost $1.5 billion.
As well, the SkyTrain light metro system has no track record of modal shift and in fact is seen today by many international transportation planners and engineers as an operating museum piece on par with the Wuppertal Schwebebahn.
The province needs a viable regional rail transportation strategy and it needs it now.
The current provincial and federal governments do not have any such strategy and political fake tears and condolences on the evening news to highway related carnage is getting more then tiresome, as the very same politicians do nothing to solve the issue.
BC desperately needs a regional rail strategy, but doing nothing seems to be the present course of action.
As mentioned many times before the province is spending $11 billion to extend the SkyTrain light-metro a mere 21.7 km in voter rich metro Vancouver, yet the E&N rots into oblivion; the RftV project is shunned and the Okanagan rail corridor has been ripped up.
Shame on the current provincial government; shame on the federal government, the blood of four dead bus passengers are on your hands.
In the era of Global Warming and climate change, not having a regional passenger rail strategy is more than an embarrassment, it is a a failure of political fiduciary duty.
I find it more than interesting that our hugely expensive rapid transit system once again fails in the snow.
Oh, the excuses are many but TransLink, the Minister of Transportation and the premier will never admit to the fact that our SkyTrain light metro system just isn’t up to scratch in adverse weather.
Even the Canada Line splutters along in snow and ice, yet scores of tramways operate with little problems in the snow, with a good examples everywhere.
What is more than galling is that TransLink with the provinces nod, is extending the Expo line to Langley, where it is known to snow a lot.
TransLink gets another big FAIL this week, but no one seems to care!
A Karlsruhe TramTrain in deep snow in the countryside.
TransLink asks people to avoid non-essential travel during the current winter storm warning in effect for Metro Vancouver, Dec. 23, 2022. Photo: @translink/Twitter
Friday morning (Dec. 23) TransLink issued a statement saying that extra staff has been working overnight to ensure public transit across Metro Vancouver can keep moving.
However, in the past few hours, ice build-up on SkyTrain’s guideway has caused multiple track issues and significant service disruptions. There is extra staff working to clear the issues but TransLink strongly advises customers to avoid travel at this time.
The Expo Line is currently halted while de-icer trains run through the system and multiple stations are closed, including Braid, Sapperton, Scott Road, Gateway, Surrey Central, and King George.
The Millennium Line is experiencing delays and there is no service currently between Lougheed and Burquitlam stations.
On the Canada Line there is no service between Bridgeport and Richmond–Brighouse stations. And there is also no service from Templeton to YVR–Airport.
Travellers to YVR are able to catch an airport shuttle from Templeton station.
TransLink says that the Coast Mountain Bus Company is re-routing bus resources to try and move people who are affected by SkyTrain disruptions.
With a winter storm warning in effect, people who must take Transit are warned to expect delays and build in extra travel time.
People can track their buses and see SkyTrain service updates on TransLink’s Trip Planner and on Twitter. You can also sign up for customized Transit Alerts for your route.
TransLink’s snow plan for severe weather is in effect and they promise they are in constant communication with each regional municipality to advise which roads and routes should be prioritized for plowing and clearing.
More…………
SkyTrain Expo Line service suspended amid Vancouver ice storm
Inclement weather has caused the suspension of operations on Metro Vancouver’s Expo Line SkyTrain, according to TransLink.
The transit provider had warned ahead of the winter storm that riders should be prepared for considerable delays. In an update Friday afternoon, TransLink said service on the Expo Line had been suspended. The Millennium and Canada lines were also experiencing delays.
TransLink said bus bridges were in effect between Columbia and King George stations, as well as between Joyce and Metrotown stations.
The Millennium Line was not running between Lougheed and Burquitlam stations, and the Canada Line had no service between Bridgeport and Richmond-Brighouse stations, nor between Templeton and YVR Airport, the agency said.
An airport shuttle was operating between Templeton Station and the airport, according to TransLink.
The transit provider blamed the delays and shutdowns on “ice build-up” on SkyTrain guideways.
“We are doing everything possible to resume service as quickly as possible, but our strong advice to customers is to avoid travel at this time,” it said in a statement.
TransLink said de-icer trains were being run through the system, and bus operator Coast Mountain Bus Company was rerouting buses to help people affected by SkyTrain disruptions.
On Thursday, as it prepared for the storm, TransLink said it had activated its snow plan and brought in extra staff.
Metro Vancouver was under a winter storm warning Friday as heavy snow was forecast to give way to freezing rain and then heavy rain.
Environment Canada warned that ice-clogged storm drains and melting snow made localized flooding “likely” as temperatures warmed Friday evening and Saturday.
The storm caused the closure of the Port Mann and Alex Fraser bridges due to concerns about ice bombs dropping onto vehicles.
The weather also extended travel woes at YVR, with 146 flights cancelled as of Friday morning, and further cancellations expected throughout the day.
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