TransLink boss flees questions and SkyTrain, travels by truck

Week before TransLink tax vote closes, commuters stymied by Expo line outage

Bird nest blaze blamed for May 22 SkyTrain SNAFU.
Bird nest blaze blamed for May 22 SkyTrain SNAFU.

It was the biggest challenge to-date for TransLink interim CEO Doug Allen (left), since CEO Ian Jarvis was shuffled into a board advisory role in February.

Part of SkyTrain’s Expo Line had gone out of service around 11 p.m. on May 21. When it got its story together the next morning, TransLink claimed that a spark from routine track-grinding maintenance near Main Street/Science World station ignited a bird nest and flames spread to a communication cable. It remains a mystery why there was no routine, precautionary visual inspection for foreign objects.

Thousands of commuters who rely on SkyTrain were late for work, school or personal appointments as repair crews kept working through the May 22 morning rush. TransLink declared a fare-free rest-of-Friday to compensate and Allen held a noon news conference near the station to apologize.

During the news conference, the precise location of the alleged bird nest and the cable fire was not pointed out and no photograph of the damage was shown to reporters. The service outage also coincided with a breakdown in the Canada Line’s ticket vending machines.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time. A week remained until the end of the non-binding, mail-in plebiscite on funding TransLink’s $7.7 billion expansion via the proposed hike of the Provincial Sales Tax from 7% to 7.5% in Metro Vancouver. A leaked business plan for TransLink’s SkyTrain subsidiary said the July 2014 service outages and escalator maintenance caused a $2.1 million budget overrun last year.

Waiving fares for the day, system-wide, could cost as much as $1.38 million in lost revenue, based on TransLink’s 2014 fare revenue forecast of $504.8 million.

Allen dodged my question about the official cost estimate but gave lip service to my query about the postponed statutory annual general meeting and 2014 financial report. The meeting, he said, would be in late June.

This is significant. TransLink’s AGM is traditionally in the last week of May, but not this year. Common sense says if the bottom line was really something to celebrate, TransLink would be promoting it to the hilt during the plebiscite period, so as to garner last-minute Yes votes from the undecided or to convince potential No voters to switch sides. It is not surprising. This is the same organization whose board of directors rejected my request to observe and report on its March 30 meeting; it would rather do business behind closed doors, even when the public is questioning its transparency and accountability.

With questions pending from several reporters, Allen walked away from the microphone after being there for seven minutes. He did not stay for a scrum. He didn’t bargain on a reporter coincidentally heading in the same direction as he walked with TransLink communications director Marc Riddell, the former award-winning executive producer at Global BC News.

I caught up to Allen, but he kept walking and refused to answer questions. Riddell told me to contact the media relations office for answers, to which I explained it has an uncanny habit of referring me to the Freedom of Information office which tends to take five weeks to answer a question.

I asked Allen about whether Lynda Cranston and Sage Group have consulting roles with TransLink (Cranston was fired from the Provincial Health Services Authority in 2013 after giving unauthorized management pay hikes; Sage is the consultancy Allen co-founded). Is he staying as CEO until mid-August or longer? What is the status of the search for a new CEO?

More silence from Allen.

“Mr. Allen,” I asked, “you want the public to trust the company, and pay more for its service through taxes. Can’t you be more accountable to the public, and answer questions?”

Even more silence from Allen, who eventually rode shotgun in a Ford F-150 pickup truck driven by Riddell out of the Science World parking lot, two blocks from another parking lot where the news conference took place. You can hear the back-in-service SkyTrain in the background of the video. Allen’s bio claims he relies on the #84 bus and Millennium line.

The optics of the interim CEO riding as a passenger in a pick-up truck instead of a bus or on SkyTrain are one thing. The missed opportunity to improve beleaguered TransLink’s image is another matter. Allen could have walked up to the station platform, boarded a train, shaken hands with the public that pays his $35,000-a-month salary and distributed some free FareSaver tickets to monthly pass holders or others with proof of prepaid fares.

Cynics would have written that off as a cheesy photo opportunity. But others would have seen it as a genuine attempt to improve customer relations at a crucial time.

There are two things guaranteed in Vancouver: rain and more SkyTrain service outages. Next time, will Allen answer all questions from reporters? Will he go face the passengers and apologize to them personally?

 


8 thoughts on “TransLink boss flees questions and SkyTrain, travels by truck

  1. e.a. foster

    a bird’s nest? really. a bird’s nest brings to a grinding halt a major transportation vehicle and thousands of people late for work. nice going. Like what happened to visually inspecting those rails once a week? You know it might have been cheaper.

    He got in a truck to duck. Nice going.

    What I found so very interesting was Anne Drenin standing behind him, arms folded in the defensive position and making faces. Like what was with all of that. Its like she was so fed up she was holding back her arms so as not to hit the idiot.

    Translink doesn’t deserve one more penny of tax money. They can’t run a transit system. If the system went out that night, why weren’t there alerts everywhere so people could make alternative arrangements. If they knew the night before they ought to have had more buses. people waiting for a couple of blocks is just not on. these people just don’t get it and neither do the political appointees who are on the b. of d. or the B.C. Lieberals who anoint the b. of d.

    If this was the best they could do, fire the lot of them and bring in new people to run the pop stand.

    Reply
  2. D.M. Johnston

    SkyTrain is now very old kit, but with SNC and Bombardier holding the patents for the proprietary railway and with operatives in both the BC Liberals and the NDP, we can only look forward to more of this museum piece being built.

    That a pyrotechnic bird nest brought SkyTrain to a halt, shows how vulnerable this vintage mini-metro is.

    CEO Allen, brought up in TransLink’s renown largess, just does not know how to deal with the situation and blunders along in true TransLink fashion.

    The free rides on Friday were a face saving measure, but TransLink can’t offer free rides every time SkyTrain craps out.

    Incompetence; cronyism; and sheer ignorance is what TransLink is!

    Reply
  3. George Brissette

    Living on the toney Westside Mr Allen is already out of touch with the majority of his customers. While his transit commute to work on the # 84 and Canada Line is against the rush-hour flow no interviewer has ever asked him nor has ever voluntered the info on his method of transportation home.
    Next time he flees the scene he should use a Ford Escape, on the plus side they’re available as a Hybrid..

    Reply
  4. D.M. Johnston

    Here is the real problem, TransLink crams every bus customer it can onto SkyTrain, to pretend that is it attracting vast numbers of ridership, which in fact it is not doing. There is basically only one east west line into Vancouver and the Canada Line, which is not SkyTrain at all, provides the North South access. If the line goes down, chaos happens and there is no redundant service to provide an alternative service.

    TransLink, some years ago admitted that over 80% of SkyTrain’s passengers first take the bus to the mini-metro, which is about double the industry standard.

    To suit the SkyTrain service and the many politicians, bureaucrats and academics, who have made their careers around SkyTrain and the densification gambit, TransLink has made SkyTrain a “backbone” of the transit service. This poor transit planning as there is no alternative transit service and all depends on one line! Therefore it is more than important that the one transit line be inspected almost daily for problems, for if there is, public transit in Metro Vancouver grinds almost to a halt.
    Compare with other cities, TransLink’s planning is dated and in the end, badly faulty.

    Reply
  5. D.M. Johnston

    Here is the real problem, TransLink crams every bus customer it can onto SkyTrain, to pretend that is it attracting vast numbers of ridership, which in fact it is not doing. There is basically only one east west line into Vancouver and the Canada Line, which is not SkyTrain at all, provides the North South access. If the line goes down, chaos happens and there is no redundant service to provide an alternative service.

    TransLink, some years ago admitted that over 80% of SkyTrain’s passengers first take the bus to the mini-metro, which is about double the industry standard.

    To suit the SkyTrain service and the many politicians, bureaucrats and academics, who have made their careers around SkyTrain and the densification gambit, TransLink has made SkyTrain a “backbone” of the transit service. This is poor transit planning as there is no alternative transit service and all depends on one line! Therefore it is more than important that the one transit line be inspected almost daily for problems, for if there is, public transit in Metro Vancouver grinds almost to a halt.

    Compare with other cities, TransLink’s planning is dated and in the end, badly thought out.

    The real problem is $100 million/km SkyTrain or $200 million/km subway as the huge costs for these mega-projects takes monies away from maintenance and take money away from maintenance, big problems become endemic.

    Reply
  6. Hawgwash

    A birds nest soup, indeed.
    So, we are supposed to just grin and bear it? Just believe what they tell us?
    A small birds’ nest fire folks, move along.
    No pictures, no firsthand account, apparently no insurance adjusters report. There was insurance wasn’t there?

    More troubling to me is the fact that such a vulnerable piece of cable, continuously exposed to the sparks from “grinding” was not encased in metal conduit like most other commercial electrical cable installations. How many miles of unprotected, exposed vulnerable cable are there?

    Was this one of those out of sight out of mind money saving construction shortcuts?
    “Nobody will ever see it gang, pack it up let’s go home.”

    Pathetic.

    Reply
  7. Lew

    There seems to be only one clear solution to this problem.

    An immediate untendered $300K contract to Sage Group to have Lynda Cranston conduct a nest inventory and provide the associated fowl with training in fireproof nest construction. That’s if Graham Whitmarsh doesn’t have her fully occupied over at Tangram1.

    BTW, I wonder if Mr. Allen’s ride was covered under Mr. Riddell’s car allowance, or whether he billed it separately?

    Reply

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