I'm staying in my sisters condo right beside the Stadium station/Rogers arena (100ft below me) and just heard 2 skytrains go by! Hopefully positive news!

edit: skytrains going by every 2-3 minutes now but can't see if the actual station is open.

Downtown Skytrain service disrupted due to electrical problem - British Columbia - CBC News

Vancouver's SkyTrain should be fully operational by midnight on Tuesday, says TransLink spokeswoman Anne Drennan.

^^ I don't trust them lol. Better plan to car pool in the morning just to be sure.

Back to full service according to translink:

http://www.translink.ca/Schedules-an...ArelrtsSection

Anyone here working at CMBC that hangs out at the VTC depot during lunch time?

across the street of VTC is where its going to be at....

-breaking news about a second delay in the completion of the Evergreen Line.

It is an early 2017 completion for Evergreen:

Evergreen Line delayed to early 2017 - NEWS 1130

PORT MOODY (NEWS 1130) – The Evergreen Line has hit a major milestone, but the news comes with a catch.

Crews have finished boring the 2-km tunnel through part of Burnaby Mountain, but the rapid transit line itself won’t be up and running until early 2017.

It was originally supposed to be operational next summer.

This is the second time the project has been delayed; the first time delay saw a promise of a fall, 2016 launch

A tweet about the amount of federal government funding that was provided for the Evergreen Line:


@SoniaSAslam
Reps from the province, Feds and @TransLink here for the breakthrough. Ottawa kicked in $425M, BC invested $586M.

https://twitter.com/SoniaSAslam/stat...369089/photo/1

http://i1150.photobucket.com/albums/...204_131227.jpg

Thanks to hotjoint for helping me out signing up for work! If it wasn't for him, I would of been thrown under the bus literally as the sign up was very last minute and we didn't have a single clue on how we choose our work.

In comparison to what i got vs. Hotjoint, I got lucky being one of the very last people signing up for regular work. The splits are sort of high up there but as long as I'm not getting off in the middle of the night then it's all good.

The rest of my class are holiday blocking. The most junior person in my class took 3 hours to select 17 weeks of his work.

3.5 more weeks until I graduate!

how long do you think it will take before you move up the seniority list and get off split shifts

I'd say probably about 2 years. I keep myself busy during my 4 hour splits so it goes by quickly. I'd love to.have a 2 hour split. 1 hour to.work out and one hour to.eat/chill is perfect imo

Np man. You definitely got better work than me coming out of class. I wonder who got that other shift with the 20 and 19, they're going to.hate it :lol

From what I've heard after talking to a few operators, anywhere from 6 to 18 months just to shorten the split shifts down from 4.5 hours down to 2 to 3 hours.

But then again, anything could happen at every sign up which happens every 3 months I think.

Class 21 just started a few days ago so they're at the bottom of the seniority list.

I'm guesstimating on the next sign up for April's work, I might get booted back on to spare board or holiday blocking.

Just got shortlisted for the community shuttle position and the video testing is new week. Any reason you chose to withdraw from community shuttle and go for conventional? Strictly pay? Should be interesting wasn't expecting them to get back to me lmao

Is the card reader on the bus different than on the skytrain? Coz on the skytrain the success rate to read my compass card so far is only 50% it requires multiple tab and sometimes I would get an error and keep tapping then it would say your card is tab already but the gates is still shut. Kinda of piss me off. On the bus it works 100% of the time.

as far as i know, both should be the same card reader. try holding the card longer on the reader and see if that helps. i'm talking like for an extra second or two.

The advantages of going straight to conventional are the following.
Guaranteed work hours which is a minimum of 37.5 hours per week.
You get a seniority number
Higher pay
Once you complete training, you stay at one depot, unless you request to transfer, or get automatically booted to another depot.
Learning the routes are easier

But by sticking with shuttle, you're stuck in the casual position for a bit, meaning you get the crap end of the stick when it comes to work selection. One day you could be working in Vancouver, other days you could be in Langley Surrey or Richmond, where ever there is shuttle service.
The only one thing I can think of is by going into shuttle, you open the flood gates for other opportunities in the company once you pass the probationary period. That's what happen to one of my classmates, initially got shortlisted as shuttle but requested to change over to conventional.

But regardless, once you pass the video test and get to the panel interview, you can request a positional change to see if conventional is available.

There might be some mis information in my post, if there are any other operators on board, feel free to correct me or add additional information.

Training classes for this year have already started, class one started on January 4th, and two more classes after that.

EDIT: I'm junior as hell and that's the best I can answer you with lol

Does anyone know if the old ticket transfers will continue on into the year. I still have a bunch, don't want to put them to waste.

Yes, faresavers do not expire. You can always use them on the bus and untill the skytrain gates close (who knows, when that will happen).

Also, you can head over the the CS office at stadium and get them to transfer the faresaver ticket value over to a compass card.

My advice for junior ops, Stay on Splits or holiday block.

IF you choose straights, It will be tiresome,annoying,grueling and will stress you out. Most of the straights at the bottom are crap. (ex, 5 trips on an 8, with less then 10 min LO time, If you even make it on time. Takes over 6 mins just to walk across the street to use the washroom and gives you no time to eat a snack )

They know, straights are sought after so they on purpose make you work for it. However, splits especially with 4 hour ones. You will most likely do only 2 to 3 trips total and lots of dead head time.

First trip in and out, and Second one will only be 2 trips with lots of run times during rush hour.

Gunsmokez, are you working out of VTC?

It's my 2nd week on my own and starting to get a better feel on what to do during my 4.5 hour spreads.

I'm hoping on my next sheet that I sign that my spreads shrink down to 4 hours, or even best case scenario 3.5 hours.

Morning tripper on the 9 is pretty good, dead head drive alone is at least 40 minutes total drive time.

from my department, what i've been told and heard is that the last of the old TVM that uses the faresavers would be taken out in March.

How does one know if i'm paying adult or student price with compass card?

I'm going to assume student means,

I believe you get the orange card when you buy a concession card (you probably can't buy a blue card, then load it next month with concession pricing).

So, they will know whether you are paying adult or student by color of your card.