Driving the SkyTrain! - Inside Vancouver's Transit System

they've just told me they're gonna let me drive the bus and we're on the sky train we're gonna show you the simulator and how it operates right here and we're going up inside the cab of the west coast express and we're at the vancouver transit center this is their bus simulator this is happening in today's video i'm michael the channel's downy live let's get it started all right we're starting here at the vancouver transit center and uh if you're new to the channel i'm mike i'm vancouver born and raised which is why going behind the scenes here today is so interesting for me our first stop of the day is the vancouver transit center this is where they keep their buses when they're not out on the roads and over 400 buses sleep here every night and over a thousand employees are based out of this hub after walking further and further into the bowels of the transit center we finally found the bus simulator now the simulator is used to help in training drivers in certain scenarios we've got protesters out in the streets exactly not only do they have pre-programmed situations that you might encounter in real life and we can put in different so we've built this one for our for for our operators to see we've got a guy coming across right here like police pulling over vehicles but derek can also take control and operate as a pedestrian running around to bother the driver or as a car to behave as a road rage incident to test and train drivers on these real-world [Music] we got possibilities angry driver there you go uh but you wouldn't miss those passengers there i did even the mirrors here so this bottom mirror is obviously a screen but this top mirror is actually a mirror like you can see you can see me waving there but it's it's a mirror that is then shooting off of this back screen behind you and that that makes it real life so when you move your head it moves as well that is so cool now when i got in the simulator derek decided not to go easy on me so far so good he changed it from daytime to nighttime full fog and full snow conditions wow you guys actually have accidents recreated in this look at this now at first i didn't take the simulator too seriously well we're drifting oh dear heavy on the gas and we've lost it but as i started to get into it i think i took it a little too seriously can i please get you to stay behind the red line actually you don't need to do all that behind the red line please sir you're doing really really well but everyone please move to the back of the bus we've got new guests coming on back of the bus please please wait folks please wait until i've got the ramp down we've got a stroller coming on board folks i said i need this area clear for strollers coming okay let's take a break here i think yeah yeah we're getting a little bit worked up here and all sort of thing but you're doing really really good here you know um outstanding you know maybe i'm not cut out for this thing after all well actually you know what we're gonna get you to do the real thing now okay you've done the simulator let's do the real thing now if you say so yep if derek says i'm ready i believe him so we're headed out to meet joel to try the real thing this yard holds 444 buses and about 260 or so he said are trolleys so there's a there's a fine appreciation of bus drivers that we don't always take into consideration we know they deal with customers and customer service but they're also operating some of the biggest vehicles on the road on some of the busiest roads these aren't just open highway this is downtown and whatnot so now i'm going to get to experience that not the downtown stuff but uh see what it's like to drive one of these seat belt is first i know that this is an electric trolley bus that normally gets its power from overhead power lines but to make sure i don't break anything we're driving it in its emergency battery power mode i'm ready to drive everyone hold on oh no just cover the brake with your foot just cover the brake and see how it'll just keep going almost like cruise control yeah i'd say this is a very easy gentle soft vehicle to drive wow you see those dots on the ground there yeah we call those horn dots you can almost treat it like your vehicle is dropping those dots right out of your the horn on the front on your steering wheel nobody panic please stay seated you can chat amongst yourselves i'm just gonna reconnect us nothing to worry about i am a trained professional with the driving going a little bit better than it did in the simulator it's time to try to hook up the bus to the electric cables above it may be natural up these steps is where they check and change the carbon connection points between the trolley bus and the overhead wires so the bus pulls in here and then there's a person standing here that'll pull these down and change the carbon on top of the pole which is the conductor that conducts electricity from the wires the cables overhead into the bus and this is this is that station next part is where i truly appreciated the skill and ability to multitask from every translink bus driver out there this was by far the most difficult part of my training and i can't imagine how much more difficult it would be with the added pressure of a bus full of passengers while in traffic so we're just about to go through some switches here i'm going to be controlling it and i've just realized how much multitasking is at play not only are you dealing with passengers on board and managing the traffic around you you also have to accurately get the speed right through the switches while also deciding and controlling the switch and managing all that at once so uh let's give it a go and now start powering your switch push your switch forward keep keep it going keep it going keep it going keep it going watch they made it they made it and you can see that they came over very nice i can wow now we can keep going so now we're looking for row 18 and now we're going to go through a second set of switches that should run automatically without me having to power it so nice and slow so this is 18 here so we're going to go left bring it down yeah and start your turn on these horn dots you got it and you can look in your mirror and see what your poles are doing so we're going to 18 or 19. we'll go 19. 19. so stop there so what happened is right now we're caught on an insulator okay so we're getting that wonderful noise yeah you can look and see that you're stuck on a white piece up there so there's no power in that okay so when a bus gets stuck on that you can use your epu to get off of it last stop thanks very much folks you've been a great rider and that's day that's one day of your training only 29 days to go oh boy i think i will leave this to you joel and i'll stick with the youtube stuff but that was great okay that was cool to see that bus but what's even cooler is the sea bus the sea bus is a bus that crosses the sea taking passengers from vancouver to north vancouver and back since 1977. so you might be more used to seeing the sea bus like this from this level but uh we're gonna head upstairs and see how the captain operates how are your days going so far how are you guys good park here is operating we're we're now headed from waterfront station in downtown vancouver headed to north van if i do say so myself i think captain hark here has the best office view in the whole city all right so if you don't already know this is a two hall vessel sort of like a catamaran and it has four engines so it should have two engines on each hull if that makes sense and we're coming down into one of them now this is one of the main engines and as you can see it's got a huge air filter here it actually has a turbo and a massive exhaust system which actually uses urea to make it have lower emissions captain hark operates each of these engines independently to smoothly slide the sea bus into the station with only an extra inch of clearance on either side of the vessel so other factors to take into consideration are wind factors and tide factors and ocean currents here there's a lot at play and even with us pressuring him and filming over his shoulder captain hark slid right into the station without so much as nudging the wall [Music] i just want for the record he did it not me this time with a new found appreciation for sea bus captains knowing that they do it all manually we went to go check out the newest vessel in the fleet we have life jackets on now so we can we can come out on deck look at this that's the captain's helm right there and this this is on top of where everyone would be sitting proof says translate right there look at this so this is this is very behind the scenes if you want to see more of this i'm putting it on the membership so right next to the subscribe button down below is the join button it's five dollars a month but i'm gonna give you the longer version the uncut experiences the stuff you don't get to see in the youtube videos because there's so much more that i filmed today that i want you to be able to experience so that's where i'm putting it is on the membership page so click the join five dollars a month and i promise i will deliver interesting valuable stuff for you there but just to reassure you you'll still be getting these regular videos every saturday right here okay we now actually have to catch our sea bus back [Music] now moving from west coast views to the west coast express the west coast express operates five daily trains and is western canada's only commuter railway so it's got a little street cred track cred and uh i'd i'd like to point out kevin's mask if you haven't already seen it that is the west coast express right there yep on his pretty smile he's blushing under the mask i can tell the west coast express has a locomotive at one end but it doesn't turn around when it gets to his destination which means when it's coming back to vancouver it has to go in reverse see we're at the back of the train here the engine is at the other end but this train doesn't turn around when it gets to your station it just goes backwards the opposite direction and the engineer the operator would sit here and drive the train from the back going this way and then in the afternoon it goes forwards the actual forwards oh look at that key that's a key a big plastic key big plastic key and that's basically where that goes the rear end can fully operate the train taking passengers from mission bc down to waterfront station in vancouver in just under one hour and 20 minutes up towards the front of the west coast express is a lot more like a traditional train so this is the nose of the train and this orange box is essentially the black box like you know from airlines and it houses a few cameras and records data from the train in case of but hopefully never because of an incident holy moly so we were just in the sea bus engine compartment and you saw how excited i got about that look at the size of this don't touch it it'll burn you this engine is huge a turbocharged 12-cylinder 3000 horsepower engine i actually think that engine was bigger than my apartment and this is the conductor's control so the conductor is the one that opens the doors and manages all the passengers but all the buttons are blocked but actually this station can be operated from any door system and the whole train the conductor has a key goes in there and they can unlock all of the buttons all of this is run smoothly from the control room upstairs which manages the station security and because the west coast express doesn't use its own tracks it also coordinates with cp rail now from the big trains to vancouver's most famous train the skytrain this is a great opportunity to remind you if you are in vancouver and you are riding transit it is now mandatory to wear masks whether you're on a platform in a train on a bus or the sea bus please care for each other respect everyone around you and let's all wear masks do you hear that unless you qualify for an exemption thank you for your cooperation light rail transit is a train that runs in the sky hence the name skytrain and we're now headed down into one of the training rooms that houses a skytrain simulator welcome to the crew training room come on in they should call it the crew sky training room so he's going to show us how to operate a sky train as we know sky trains are essentially autonomous they're run through a headquarters and all computer programmed to run on their own so they don't have any incidents but on the occasional time when the system goes down like any technical thing there may be a glitch at some point and they'll have to be run manually and every single sky train has a box at the front where you can open it up and there are controls under there and this is a simulator so we're going to get to learn how those controls work before we actually go and drive it on the track lights are on so now i have control i need to enable propulsion and release the park brake because i only get one shot at this we're gonna see how fast we can go from zero to a hundred here here we go here we go this is so weird i feel like i should have a steering wheel but it it's obviously on track so wow look at this okay speed we're at 80 kilometers an hour 90 downhill or we're way past 100 [Music] it's the horn we'll do one more [Music] pretty good i want to say a big thanks to dan derrick joel kevin mo and everyone at translink for showing us around today and i want to remind you don't forget to wear your mask on transit it's now mandatory and wearing is caring okay so that's about it so if you enjoyed learning about translink and you want to learn more about vancouver i have a playlist of vancouver videos you can watch right here don't forget to subscribe by clicking on my face the channel is down here live it's more adventure it's more behind the scenes and i can't wait to see you again and i don't know where i'm going next but i know i want you there with me see ya

Channel: DownieLive

Views: 735,185

Keywords: skytrain, translink, translink bus, translink skytrain, skytrain canada line, bus, trolley bus, electric trolley bus, vancouver canada, vancouver bc, vancouver, Public Transport, public transportation, DownieLive, expo line, bc, transit, canada, millennium line, seabus, canada line, west coast express, wce, train, transportation, railway, railfan, rail, subway, metro, travel vlog, british columbia, vancouver transit, guide to vancouver, vancouver news, vancouver skytrain, vancouver bus

Id: 6Xc9RGzM1tM

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 19 2020