What a week for TransLink. First there was the computer malfunction on Thursday, shutting down SkyTrain service for three hours or so. Then, on Monday, a union electrician apparently caused a power failure that shut the system down for five hours. As I blog this on Wednesday morning, there are reports pouring in from social media users about more SkyTrain issues, including multiple (as many as a dozen) sudden stops between stations.

SkyTrain prez Fred Cummings (2012 salary: $259,131) is apparently on vacation this week, so TransLink trotted out COO Doug Kelsey (2012 salary: $336,729) yesterday to throw the union electrician under the train and to throw out the usual TransLink talking points:

While acknowledging the disruptions have been inconvenient for customers, TransLink stressed that the two incidents are completely unrelated.

“Two times don’t make a trend,” said TransLink’s chief operating officer Doug Kelsey. “We have a 95 per cent performance record. There is nothing here that signals to me that we have a problem. These type of incidents are infrequent.”

First, how can a SkyTrain system that has precisely two scheduled trains – the first one and the last one – have a 95% on time record, as Cummings tweeted out just before the Thursday shutdown?

Is three times a trend, Doug? How about three times EVERY month?

As I wrote last week, earlier this year, a blog called Life in New Westminster broke down thousands of tweets and other data to get to the bottom of SkyTrain performance. It’s an amazing piece of citizen journalism. His conclusion:

How good is SkyTrain reliability overall? Well, it really depends on how you look at the numbers. The optimist would say the combined system is operating normally 98.5% of the time, and the individual lines even better than that. The pessimist would say there's a significant issue every 2.5 days, and major issues lasting more than 45 minutes occur nearly three times a month.

I’ll leave the last word to the Life in NW blog:

There is nothing here that Translink and the operating companies don’t (or at least shouldn’t) already know. Trains are an issue on the Expo Line. Track and system issues are a problem on the Canada Line. My questions for Translink are about what is being done to address these issues.

• What is being done to fix the problems with the Bridgeport tracks and switches?
• What parts of the Mark I train refurbishment program will address train reliability issues?
• What actions are being taken to reduce the number of and duration of intrusion incidents?

And similar questions for the other issues. I would also encourage Translink to be more transparent in their reliability reporting. Show us what’s really happening; tell us why and what you’re doing about it. It shouldn’t take a blogger with too much time on his hands to do this. Finally, my advice if you want to avoid Skytrain issues: Travel only on Sunday nights during the summer.

If I were a Lower Mainland talk show producer, I’d be booking this blogger yesterday. And if I were Geoff Meggs (perish the thought!) and wanted some serious, independent research on SkyTrain failures, I’d be buying this blogger lunch.