Bus and SeaBus services in Metro Vancouver to resume Wednesday: TransLink

Bus and SeaBus services across Metro Vancouver to resume Wednesday: TransLink

Trolley buses in downtown Vancouver. (TransLink)

As of just after 5 pm Tuesday, it has been confirmed that all TransLink bus and SeaBus services will resume on Wednesday, January 24.

The public transit authority states that service will restart at 3:30 am Wednesday, but it will take some time for services to be fully up and running after 48 hours of continuous shutdown since Monday morning.

Services on the bus and SeaBus systems should be back to normal schedules by 5 am Wednesday.

This is a short reprieve from CUPE 4500’s job action. At this time, bus and SeaBus services can be expected for at least one day.

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Services are restarting as Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 4500’s shutdown notice last week was limited to 48 hours starting 3 pm Monday, January 22. This means 180 CMBC supervisors for the bus and SeaBus system will temporarily stop their picketing activities and return to work, allowing over 5,000 bus drivers, engineers, mechanics, and other operations and maintenance workers to also go back to work, as they cannot cross picket lines.

Although normal services will resume, CUPE 4500’s members will return to their “baseline” job action of an overtime ban, which first began on January 6.

Further rounds of service shutdowns are possible if both sides are unable to break their impasse on reaching a deal for the 180 CMBC supervisors.

“We will continue with our overtime ban [on Wednesday], and then if we don’t have a deal, then we’ll have to plan our next escalation. Obviously, there’s going to be an escalation, which will be more than the current one. I’m sure that we will be announcing something at some point,” said Liam O’Neill, a spokesperson for CUPE 4500, during a press conference early Monday afternoon.

An agreement between the union and TransLink’s Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC) has not been reached, and both sides have yet to schedule a new date to resume bargaining.

SkyTrain, West Coast Express, West Vancouver Blue Bus, and other services are not impacted by job action at this time, and are still running as usual.

But there is a risk that job action could spread to other unions and services beyond the bus and SeaBus system, as early as early next week, when the BC Labour Relations Board is scheduled to hear CUPE 4500’s complaints and application to expand job action — enabling CUPE 4500 members to legally picket outside the facilities of other public transit operators, such as SkyTrain facilities. This could trigger a shutdown of SkyTrain and other services.

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