Officials refining technical procedures after a Skyline train stops in its tracks

HONOLULU (KHON2) — According to the Department of Transportation Services, Skyline experienced its first incident since operating on Tuesday.

DTS called it unusual, when a scheduled out of service train was meant to go from the Halawa station back to the operations center. DTS added, when it got closer to the Pearlridge station, the train stopped within the crossover track.

“So the train stopped as scheduled, but it did not respond once it was told to start which created the problem for us,” said Roger Morton, DTS director.

According to DTS, no passengers were onboard at the time, but nearly 600 people were impacted during the few hours the train was stalled. TheBus added a substitute bus service for passengers and connected to other impacted stations.

“Our apologies as a department for the inconvenience that they went through,” Morton said.

“Sometimes these things happen and I would just hope that there is an announcement prepared and most often they do,” said John Magnussen, a Skyliner rider.

“Escape ladders on at least the middle parts of the rails so incase it does stop there’s a way to get off,” said Jeffrey Jictin, another Skyline rider.

DTS said, when a disruption happens they have clear communication with passengers and they do have contingency plans. However, in the event passengers are onboard during a stall, evacuations would not be called for.

“A regular train not carrying passengers sent from the yard to the disabled train to hook it up, couple it, and pull it back to the nearest station and that’s what we would do if passengers were onboard,” said Morton.

DTS said, this has been a learning lesson and it will reine some technical procedures moving forward.

“We’re going to sit down again and go over it with our partners, our rail partners, our bus partners, our folks internally just to make sure we can use this event as a seldom occurring learning event,” Morton said.