Thirty-four buses were taken off the road in the Tri-Cities on Wednesday after mechanics discovered they had cracked and faulty wheel axles.
The issues with the 10-year-old coaches, all of which are based out of the Port Coquitlam depot, caused service disruptions throughout the area and buses had to be brought in from other parts of the Lower Mainland.
“There was an impact to service as a result of moving those buses off the road so quickly,” said Chris Bryan, senior communications advisor with TransLink.
“Today [Thursday], we replaced all of the buses. We have some spares we can dip into. We also reallocated a handful of buses from throughout the region.”
The news comes as TransLink prepares to roll out a number of major route changes on Monday (Dec. 19) designed to improve connections to the new Evergreen Extension.
Bryan said they expect a smooth transition next week.
“We will have our full compliment of buses on the road for the service changes,” he said.
The issues with the sidelined vehicles came to light this week when mechanics noticed that one of the axles on a 3300 Series New Flyer coach had cracked. That led to an inspection of all of the 3300 Series buses and it was determined that a total of 34 vehicles had similar problems.
“Safety is definitely our top priority,” Bryan said. “We wanted to make sure those were off the road right away.”
TransLink is now working with New Flyer and the manufacturer of the axle. Bryan said it is too soon to say whether the problem is a design flaw.
In the meantime, new axles have been ordered for the sidelined buses and are expected to arrive shortly.
@gmckennaTC
