Curious crowds packed the Evergreen Extension on opening day last Friday and for weekend jaunts to check out the new SkyTrain line but the Monday morning commute was a particularly crammed one, riders reported.
TransLink spokesperson Chris Bryan said preliminary ridership numbers would be available later this week but said, in general, it was a busier than expected opening day.
"I think a lot of people saw the weather and actually chose to hop on SkyTrain to avoid getting stuck on the roads," Bryan said.
Port Moody resident Aaron Robinson was one such commuter, saying he took a "busy" Evergreen to Vancouver Monday morning to avoid driving in the snow.
"It was hectic… but definitely safer than driving," Robinson said. "I'm almost glad to see how busy the Evergreen line was — to see people were using it as an alternative when driving was definitely going to be nasty."
The real snarl happened when Robinson tried to change lines at Commercial-Broadway Station, where he had to wait as eight trains passed him by.
"It's clearly going to be a choke point for transit," he told The Tri-City News. "I was impressed with how calm people were and how orderly people were just fitting into the trains when they could."
Dixon Tam, a Coquitlam resident who had planned to wait for a week or two before trying the new rapid transit route to his job in east Vancouver, saw the snow and quickly changed his mind. He tweeted that his trip to Rupert Station took just 32 minutes but riders were "packed like sardines majority of trip."
Getting off the train, he discovered, meant resorting to "hand-to-hand combat in order to fight my way off the train because it was so jam packed."
According to TransLink, delays of five to 10 minutes on the Millennium and Expo lines Monday were due mainly to chunks of ice and snow triggering motion sensor alarms.
"It was a bit of an extraordinary day as far as weather goes," Bryan said. "It was having pretty significant impacts on the bus systems… but it went fairly smoothly."
With more snow expected to hit by Thursday, TransLink is staying prepared with a number of measures, he said, including special trains that spray the power rails with de-icer and machines that spray the undercarriages of trains to ensure power collectors are free of ice.
"We only get this kind of weather a few days a year," Bryan said, "but there are lots of ways we make sure we keep the trains and buses moving as well as possible."
