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Other cities that have late-night rail systems have multiple tracks, so they can divert while doing maintenance. SkyTrain has a single guideway with no redundancy.

Even extending the weekend schedule by an hour each night would cause issues.

To make up for lost maintenance hours, service would have to be cut on weeknights and statutory holidays. Ridership would take a hit — a fact that weakened the business case.

New Westminster mayor and TransLink’s Mayors’ Council chair Jonathan Coté said they had hoped originally that SkyTrain service could be extended, but now have better information to understand the challenges.

“I think the report made it very clear, the negative tradeoff would be (cutting) some of the regular service, and I think it was never the intent of this body to take away from other service and have winners and losers in this discussion,” Coté said.

To provide more service and get people home safely, TransLink plans to invest in the night bus system. Currently, there are 10 bus routes that run through the night, taking people from Vancouver throughout the region.

Steve Vanagas, TransLink’s vice-president of customer communications and public affairs, said a lot of people were not aware of the existing night bus system, so TransLink recently ran a campaign to encourage people to use the bus. He said there was a 20-per-cent increase in ridership, year over year, as a result.

Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

Plans are under way to add frequency and capacity to existing routes, such as the N19 between downtown Vancouver and Surrey, and expand to areas such as Port Coquitlam. It will realign the N15 route to the airport and beef up service for the N17 to the University of B.C. Many of these changes will be rolled out by this fall.