Dear editor,

Your recent story quotes a representative of Barwatch saying maintenance work doesn't take place on the SkyTrain system overnight. That is factually wrong and fundamentally misleading.

In fact, on Expo Line alone, we conduct about 1,500 hours of overnight maintenance work each year. That's about four hours per night.

If we were to adjust the hours of SkyTrain to run 24 hours per day on weekends, we would need to shift about 400 to 500 of those maintenance hours on the Expo Line to make up for that lost time somewhere else in the day.

Parts of our system are 30 years old and keeping it in a state of good repair is our priority.

That being said we also want to help in being part of the solution to get people home safely every day of the week. Extending service hours later on a weekend—or any other time—is a good discussion to have.

Working with the City of Vancouver, police, and the local community, we will examine all options so we can continue to meet the needs of our all of our transit customers.

Vivienne King
President, B.C. Rapid Transit Company