Old Noise Issues Plague SkyTrain
This problem has been around a long time, small wheels means more revolutions and more wear of the track’ correlated rails; and a strict regimen of rail grinding and preventative maintenance of the steerable axle trucks.
This costs a lot of money and TransLink has never been good with maintenance issues.
TransLink is near broke and is stealing from the maintenance budget to pay for other costs. It is bit of a shell game.
This is the second time in 36 years that the rail has been replaced and the steerable axle truck’s issues also bridge over to the ART/MALM cars.
The big problem, of course, is that the Expo and Millennium line’s are proprietary railways and when proprietary railways age, costs rise dramatically, but maintenance budgets do not.
The “SkyTrain” chickens are coming home to roost.
Burnaby residents say screeching SkyTrain is unbearable, TransLink says it’s working on it
TransLink says it knows some of its SkyTrains, especially on the Expo Line, are noisy but it is committed to reducing noise as much as possible.
After a letter to the editor of the Burnaby Now newspaper generated more than 150 comments on a Reddit thread, TransLink told Global News it will be implementing recommendations put forward by an independent consultant to deal with the matter.
According to the letter, the curve just west of the Edmonds station, on the Expo Line, is the worst for noise pollution.
According to a report conducted in 2018, TransLink stated it is implementing a number of noise-mitigation techniques.
These include replacing the rail with harder steel, improving rail grinding techniques to reduce noise and adding rail friction modifiers and rail dampers throughout the system.
“TransLink is committed to reducing SkyTrain noise for residents as much as possible,” the organization said in a statement. “We are implementing recommendations put forward by an independent consultant who examined ways to mitigate noise on the SkyTrain system.”
The Expo Line is nearly 40 years old, having been built for Expo 86, and TransLink said trains will always have some level of noise.
