'Rotten eggs': City investigating smelly SkyTrain station

What’s causing smell at SkyTrain stations? A mysterious and rather rancid odour is making waiting for the train particularly unpleasant at downtown SkyTrain stations.

Regular SkyTrain users have noticed a foul-smelling stench that appears to come and go, especially at Burrard Station.

Passengers don’t agree on when they started getting a whiff of the odour, but told CTV News it’s not getting any better.

“It’s like a porta-potty or like a bathroom,” said Savanah Agas, who rides the train several times a week.

“I find it’s more midday, afternoon, later in the day, when there's more people on the train,” she figured.

Some days are better than others. In fact, the rank air can disappear altogether.

But when it creeps back in, and fills the platform, passengers reach for their noses and squeeze them shut.

“There is a horrible smell down here,” said Terry King, who takes the SkyTrain four times a week.

“It’s horrible. Pretty nasty. Rotten eggs,” she said.

No one believes it’s a gas leak, but some suspect it might be sewage.

At times it is so pungent that it gets trapped in trains, and passengers can smell it when they board several stations down the line.

“It gets caught in the tunnel, and when you're down here, it's not nice,” said King.

TransLink said it checked with the British Columbia Rapid Transit Company, which maintains and operates the line, and found the issue does not “appear to related to (transit).”

A spokesperson for the City of Vancouver told CTV News officials were unaware of the foul smell, because nobody called 311 to complain.

Engineers also don’t know of any sewer issues around Burrard Station, but “crews are looking into this further,” the spokesperson said.