A technical issue with a motor on a single SkyTrain prompted the outage that stranded thousands of riders Tuesday, grinding the rush hour commute to a halt.

TransLink CEO Doug Allen told reporters at a briefing Wednesday morning that an “induction motor problem” wiped out power to a total of 19 trains.

He said staff were able to get to 15 of the 19 trains within 20 minutes – but admitted the remaining four sweltering SkyTrains took longer to reach.

He maintains the transit authority had a “terrific response” to the issue.

Allen said police, security and transit staff came together to free trapped passengers quickly, but the biggest issue in his mind is that there isn’t “a proper allocation of staff at stations.”

“If you look at how we’re doing with respect to reliability overall we’re pretty darned good,” Allen said.

“The overall track record of TransLink is very strong.”

The system was down for two hours while the problem was investigated. Bus bridges were set up to keep commuters moving out of the city, but it couldn’t accommodate the growing swells of stranded riders.

An additional 16 staff will be brought in to SkyTrain stations by August 1, Allen said, and a total of 64 additional staff will be added by October 1.

Allen says his team is looking at the more than 500 induction motors in the system to make sure there won’t be more “significant” issues, but that will take time.

After the last outage TransLink offered refunds for stranded passengers, but this time the transit authority has no plans to reimburse riders for the outage.

“Reimbursing those with a monthly pass isn’t really reimbursing them because they’ve already paid,” Colleen Brennan, vice president of communications and customer engagement for TransLink, told CTV Morning Live.

Last month, the system was knocked out for more than 12 hours after a birds nest caught fire during routine work on tracks in East Vancouver.

TransLink says this time they were able to reach stranded passengers sooner.

“We think we are getting better at dealing with these things more quickly,” said Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan.

“People have to remember no system that's as huge as this with as many parts to it is ever going to be perfect all the time.”

Stranded passengers took to Twitter to vent their frustrations during the outage, and the hashtag #Skyhostage was soon trending.

When is take your kid to work day? @TransLink staff should be forced to ride #SkyTrain then. "Mommy, why I'm I a #Skyhostage?" — Nagoya Jon (@nagoyajon) June 10, 2015

#Skyhostage : When Liam Neeson's daughter is trapped on a skytrain, the former secret agent will do anything to save her (except pay fare) — Andy Garland (@AndyHGarland) June 10, 2015

#Translink has two CEOs now. Can't one of them get out and push? #SkyHostage — Dan Jackson (@MANIFESTphoto) June 10, 2015

.@translink It's chaos at Waterfront. I just saw a man eat his daughter for sustenance. There's no water. Wolves are howling. #skyhostage — Aaron (@octobermidnight) June 10, 2015