Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You'll actually see John Tory on the subway in Toronto. Not with a camera crew. Just wearing his headphones. Going to work. Enough people saw that, it ended up a meme that even he poked fun at. How many people have seen Watson on the subway without a reporter behind him?

I've seen him once. He seems to use it fairly regularly from what I gather. I've never seen or heard of Manconi using it. Hubley only took it once, with Watson, and they made a big deal out of it on Twitter.

[rocketphish]

Can a British consulting firm restore Ottawa LRT's promise?

James Bagnall, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: January 24, 2020

When Bombardier began introducing its S Stock trains into service on the London Underground in 2010, no one was impressed.

Deliveries of the British-built units were erratic and out-of-sequence. The service was unreliable. Trains stalled, doors stuck, air conditioning failed and software systems were less-than-smooth, according to a report in Modern Railways. Late in 2011, some deliveries were suspended; others simply weren’t accepted.

Since a massive order of 191 transit cars was involved, Montreal-based Bombardier quickly sought outside help. It hired JBA Corp., the same consulting group that is now advising Rideau Transit Group about how to fix its botched rollout of Ottawa’s light rail transit service.

Bombardier’s 2011 rollout was back on schedule within six months under JBA’s guidance, and it would deliver the last of the trains of this particular order in 2015. How did JBA produce the turnaround? A case study on its website offers only a few clues — basic stuff like identifying the issues causing the problems, assigning personnel to track daily progress and generally making sure engineering and production employees were continuously aware of the latest fixes.

Concentrating on the basics this way could certainly help RTG’s light rail service, which has been plagued by similar types of issues.

But JBA — and its founder James Boyle — are also facing a more complex set of problems than they did at Bombardier. RTG, after all, is a shell owned by three separate companies — ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin. Many of the technical issues have emerged from the trains cars (built by Alstom) and software (Thales Engineering and others). These are suppliers to RTG and it’s possible the light rail system’s failings to date may have nothing to do with the products they build. It could be a complicated knock-on effect from some other aspect of the $2.1-billion project.

Boyle’s personal history might be relevant here. According to his LinkedIn profile, Boyle has been intimately involved in the rail industry for more than two decades. This included stints at Alstom as a reliability engineer (1995 to 1998) and at Bombardier Transportation, where he managed the introduction of trains into service from 2000 to 2003. The consultant was also vice-president of operations between 2005 and 2007 for Metronet, the entity then in charge of modernizing a good chunk of the London Underground’s infrastructure.

But in the summer of 2007, Metronet sought the British equivalent of bankruptcy protection because spending had got out of hand. “The overall direct loss to taxpayers arising from Metronet’s administration is between $360 million and $860 million,” a report of the British government’s comptroller and auditor general concluded. “The main cause of Metronet’s failure was its poor corporate governance and leadership,” the report added.

But the report also makes clear this wasn’t necessarily the fault of Metronet’s top managers.

The auditor general pointed out that five shareholders comprised Metronet, including Bombardier, meaning that many key decisions had to be agreed upon by all five firms. Since the shareholders were all suppliers to the London Underground, their interests weren’t always aligned in favour of Metronet. Indeed, the report noted that individual shareholders had power over the scope of work to be done and insisted on being paid for extra work.

Little wonder the expenses escalated.

Metronet eventually disappeared into a government agency. And James Boyle, meanwhile, had acquired a wealth of experience in dealing with multiple government and private sector entities.

Will it help him and his JBA consultants in Ottawa? Maybe. The city’s beleaguered commuters would like nothing better to see them earn their generous fees.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...a-lrts-promise

[lrt's friend]

Confederation Line trains have power problems at Tunney's Pasture, Pimisi and Cyrville today causing service interruptions at various times according to OC Transpo Live Twitter.

OC Transpo Live
@OCTranspoLive
·
6h
O-Train Line 1: Longer wait and travel times may be experienced due to trains being held at Tunney's Pasture and Pimisi due to power issues. Full service is running between Tunney's Pasture and Blair. https://octranspo.com/en/alerts/#alerts-23599

OC Transpo Live
@OCTranspoLive
·
4h
O-Train Line 1: Longer wait and travel times may be experienced due to a train being held at Cyrville due to a power issue. Full service is running between Tunney's Pasture and Blair. https://octranspo.com/en/alerts/#alerts-23599

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Confederation Line trains have power problems at Tunney's Pasture, Pimisi and Cyrville today causing service interruptions at various times according to OC Transpo Live Twitter.

Good Day.

Theory...... wet 'blanket' snow accumulating in those open-top roof wells ?
It doesn't run off like rain water does.

Just an idea.

[acottawa]

I am glad they are finally bringing in some outside experts. It is unfortunate more were not used during the construction and testing phase.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by PHrenetic

Good Day.

Theory...... wet 'blanket' snow accumulating in those open-top roof wells ?
It doesn't run off like rain water does.

Just an idea.

Good Day.

I think I got a bingo......at O-TrainFans, per a memo from Manconi , 2020 Jan 27, to Council and Transit Commission :

https://www.otrainfans.ca/news/o-tra...fecting-trains

The loss of power to the vehicle motors is due to electrical problems with the equipment on the roof of the vehicle.
The vehicles appear to be more prone to these failures during wet or inclement weather.

And I'll bet exacerbated by the metallic 'dirt' from the wires/pantographs that accumulates up there.

Well.....big hairy DUH !!!
Clean the bloody trains properly, EH !
And properly cover, protect, isolate, and shield the electrics.

[rocketphish]

Bad weather is bad news for Ottawa LRT trains, city told

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: January 27, 2020

International rail experts hired by Rideau Transit Group are being treated to a fine example of Ottawa’s current LRT mess as the city’s contractor started another week with a serious shortage of trains for the busiest times of day.

The gurus from JBA Corp. come on board this week with news that the Alstom Citadis Spirit trains don’t like bad weather.

The city reported that several trains suddenly stopped during the snowy, wet weekend because their circuit breakers tripped.

The problems continued Monday when only nine trains operated during the busy morning and afternoon transit commutes.

There should be 13 trains during peak-hour service. Wait times for trains hit six minutes, two minutes longer than what people have been used to when LRT is working properly.

Experts from JBA are expected to examine a dozen issues flagged by the city about LRT maintenance. The consultants have been helping the City of Ottawa’s transportation department figure out if RTG is off track with the maintenance program, and now RTG, which is a partnership of ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin, has hired the consultants to fix troubles related to LRT upkeep.

JBA has experience with Alstom trains and infrastructure.

Everything about RTG’s maintenance program, which is overseen by affiliate Rideau Transit Maintenance, appears to be open to scrutiny.

Someone will obviously have to look into the power problems with the trains.

John Manconi, the city’s transportation general manager, told council and transit commission members on Monday that the loss of power to the vehicle motors has to do with problems with the electrical equipment on top of the vehicles.

“The vehicles appear to be more prone to these failures during wet or inclement weather,” Manconi told members.

The root cause is under investigation.

According to Manconi’s note, safety systems monitoring the flow of electricity will cut power using a rooftop circuit breaker and the train might come to a stop. Other on board systems, like the lighting, still work when the breaker trips.

“Customers may hear a bang or see sparks where the train contacts the overhead power wires. This may be startling but does not pose a risk to the safety of passengers in the train or on the platform,” Manconi said in his email to members.

When a train loses power, a technician must investigate and reset the system. Workers remove the train for inspection and maintenance.

The reason why there’s such a shortage of trains this week is because some of the repairs require time to complete, Manconi said.

OC Transpo strategically pulled buses from routes across the city to fill a supplemental bus service along the LRT route. The transit agency published 138 bus trips on Monday that were cancelled so buses could instead help move customers in and out of downtown.

A supplemental bus service will run on streets parallel to the LRT line until at least Friday.

It seems that as soon as RTG started getting a handle on some problems, like the buggy computer systems and the malfunctioning doors, new problems started to emerge.

The list of problems grew over the weekend when some trains conked out because of the power problems.

RTG was just making progress on rounding out steel wheels that have developed flat spots. There was a backlog of maintenance — up to 13 trains at one point had flat spots on wheels — and the company couldn’t roll out the necessary number of trains to provide full service.

Over the past four weeks, RTG reported some occurrences of electrical arcing above the trains.

Then there was that train that pulled down an overhead wire near St. Laurent Station.

Track switches have been a problem, too, as RTG figures out a maintenance strategy for heavy snow and ice.

For each separate problem, RTG has assembled a task force to investigate the root causes.

During a transit commission meeting last week, Peter Lauch, chief executive of RTG’s maintenance arm, said the company has been consumed with reacting to problems rather than studying day-to-day operational issues.

RTG was the top-ranked consortia during the Stage 1 procurement, both on the technical side and financial side. The consortium’s maintenance and rehabilitation plan scored 80 per cent during the technical evaluation, leading to the group’s winning the $2.1-billion LRT construction contract. The group has a 30-year maintenance deal with the city, which is withholding monthly payments during the service problems.

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ains-city-told

[DarthVader_1961]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

Bad weather is bad news for Ottawa LRT trains, city told

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: January 27, 2020

International rail experts hired by Rideau Transit Group are being treated to a fine example of Ottawa’s current LRT mess as the city’s contractor started another week with a serious shortage of trains for the busiest times of day.

The gurus from JBA Corp. come on board this week with news that the Alstom Citadis Spirit trains don’t like bad weather.

The city reported that several trains suddenly stopped during the snowy, wet weekend because their circuit breakers tripped.

The problems continued Monday when only nine trains operated during the busy morning and afternoon transit commutes.

There should be 13 trains during peak-hour service. Wait times for trains hit six minutes, two minutes longer than what people have been used to when LRT is working properly.

Experts from JBA are expected to examine a dozen issues flagged by the city about LRT maintenance. The consultants have been helping the City of Ottawa’s transportation department figure out if RTG is off track with the maintenance program, and now RTG, which is a partnership of ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin, has hired the consultants to fix troubles related to LRT upkeep.

JBA has experience with Alstom trains and infrastructure.

Everything about RTG’s maintenance program, which is overseen by affiliate Rideau Transit Maintenance, appears to be open to scrutiny.

Someone will obviously have to look into the power problems with the trains.

John Manconi, the city’s transportation general manager, told council and transit commission members on Monday that the loss of power to the vehicle motors has to do with problems with the electrical equipment on top of the vehicles.

“The vehicles appear to be more prone to these failures during wet or inclement weather,” Manconi told members.

The root cause is under investigation.

According to Manconi’s note, safety systems monitoring the flow of electricity will cut power using a rooftop circuit breaker and the train might come to a stop. Other on board systems, like the lighting, still work when the breaker trips.

“Customers may hear a bang or see sparks where the train contacts the overhead power wires. This may be startling but does not pose a risk to the safety of passengers in the train or on the platform,” Manconi said in his email to members.

When a train loses power, a technician must investigate and reset the system. Workers remove the train for inspection and maintenance.

The reason why there’s such a shortage of trains this week is because some of the repairs require time to complete, Manconi said.

OC Transpo strategically pulled buses from routes across the city to fill a supplemental bus service along the LRT route. The transit agency published 138 bus trips on Monday that were cancelled so buses could instead help move customers in and out of downtown.

A supplemental bus service will run on streets parallel to the LRT line until at least Friday.

It seems that as soon as RTG started getting a handle on some problems, like the buggy computer systems and the malfunctioning doors, new problems started to emerge.

The list of problems grew over the weekend when some trains conked out because of the power problems.

RTG was just making progress on rounding out steel wheels that have developed flat spots. There was a backlog of maintenance — up to 13 trains at one point had flat spots on wheels — and the company couldn’t roll out the necessary number of trains to provide full service.

Over the past four weeks, RTG reported some occurrences of electrical arcing above the trains.

Then there was that train that pulled down an overhead wire near St. Laurent Station.

Track switches have been a problem, too, as RTG figures out a maintenance strategy for heavy snow and ice.

For each separate problem, RTG has assembled a task force to investigate the root causes.

During a transit commission meeting last week, Peter Lauch, chief executive of RTG’s maintenance arm, said the company has been consumed with reacting to problems rather than studying day-to-day operational issues.

RTG was the top-ranked consortia during the Stage 1 procurement, both on the technical side and financial side. The consortium’s maintenance and rehabilitation plan scored 80 per cent during the technical evaluation, leading to the group’s winning the $2.1-billion LRT construction contract. The group has a 30-year maintenance deal with the city, which is withholding monthly payments during the service problems.

jwilling@postmedia.com
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ains-city-told

Seriously.. WTF??? Why was this not considered during design/construction?

[rocketphish]

Why Ottawa's LRT is a lesson in how not to manage a major environmental project

Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: January 27, 2020

LRT planners once promised the new train system would help our climate as much as planting 9.4 million trees, by replacing diesel buses and private cars with “zero-emission” public transit.

The reality is different, and experts call it a painful lesson in how not to manage a major environmental project.

The plan was to cut 180 Transpo buses, but scores of those have been brought back to regular routes or to ease congestion when the LRT system falters. And the promised surge of former car drivers has not happened.

The rosy promise of a clean and reliable transit future comes in a 2012 municipal document called The Benefits of Light Rail.

“LRT will not just accommodate more riders. Its combination of speed, comfort and reliability will also encourage more people to use public transit,” it says. “In fact, studies suggest the introduction of LRT will lead to a 9 per cent increase in ridership. That means 4.6 million new trips in the first year alone.”

OC Transpo will save 10 million litres of diesel fuel per year, the document says. And passengers will save a combined 17 million hours a year because LRT will make commuting faster. This improved efficiency helps the local economy.

Instead transit has become slower and less reliable, and the continuing reliance on buses and cars has damaged the opportunity to slash emissions. It’s still early days for the LRT system, so the lofty goals envisioned by city planners may one day be realized, but that requires trust in the process — trust that hasn’t been earned yet.

At Ecology Ottawa, Erik Pervin calls LRT “the largest climate program the city has ever undertaken in terms of the ambition and what it could do.

“But it’s not working well.

“What ends up happening is that people drive the same amount if not more because the buses are no longer able to take them where they want to go. And perhaps more menacingly over time, it erodes the people’s trust in the transit system and it will make them less likely to ride (on transit) in the future.

“It’s really disappointing from our perspective.”

Ridership may be edging up, but only as Ottawa’s population is growing, he said.

“It’s already difficult to get on the train. It can be very, very packed” at rush hour. “It has to be working for the users, so it has to be something that they want to use, that they enjoy using … because that element of trust and ridership buy-in is so critical.”

Monica Gattinger, a political scientist who studies energy at the University of Ottawa, says governments have to understand that reality is harder than theory in fighting climate change.

“It’s one thing for political leaders to make ambitious commitments to reduce emissions, and quite another to actually achieve them. Governments are going to need to learn an awful lot more — and fast — about how to achieve reductions in the real worlds of peoples’ daily lives, politics and large infrastructure projects,” she said.

Energy consultant Mike Cleland calls it “an opportunity to learn some lessons about how these big projects normally unfold, (and) not just in transit.

“They are complex. They inevitably involve all kinds of surprises from technical to engineering to cost to managerial problems (such as) the way the buses connect to the transit stations.”

In climate change terms “we should be asking ourselves how practical it is to do so many big projects on a very short period of time?” He was referring to the vast changes in energy systems that would be required for Canada to meet its emissions promises, such as generating and transmitting electricity.

Ottawa has declared a climate emergency and says the problem is urgent.

“If we need to act urgently, then the most urgent thing we need to do is figure out how to make our systems work better,” Cleland said.

tspears@postmedia.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...mental-project

[Truenorth00]

So they should have gone with heavy rail?

[movebyleap]

Perhaps they should have gone with an actual subway!

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

So they should have gone with heavy rail?

I remember there was an industry consultation maybe 10 years ago, and light metro was recommended. The city choose to disregard that advice. I don't think ridership (or forecasts) are anywhere near where heavy rail would be the recommended solution.

Although a significant number of the implementation problems appear less tied to the choice of rolling stock and more tied to incompetence, corner cutting or mismanagement.

[DarthVader_1961]

Could electrification be done without over hanging wires?

[corynv]

Originally Posted by DarthVader_1961

Could electrification be done without over hanging wires?

There are options. Could use battery based trains. Could also use a capacitor based system (like the New Castle trams do), can also do a 3rd rail option (either always live, or a segmented one like Alstom has in a few places. Though personally with how much snow we get here, and it being an open system i'd rather not go with that).

Both the Battery and Capacitor ones would require recharge points along the line, and i'm not sure how long it'd take to recharge (also how many points they'd need for proper coverage).

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by corynv

Both the Battery and Capacitor ones would require recharge points along the line, and i'm not sure how long it'd take to recharge (also how many points they'd need for proper coverage).

A battery system could work on the Trillium Line, which due to inefficiencies in its single-track layout has long dwell times (to recharge) at multiple points along the route. However, I doubt it would work on the Confederation Line with existing technology.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I remember there was an industry consultation maybe 10 years ago, and light metro was recommended. The city choose to disregard that advice. I don't think ridership (or forecasts) are anywhere near where heavy rail would be the recommended solution.

Although a significant number of the implementation problems appear less tied to the choice of rolling stock and more tied to incompetence, corner cutting or mismanagement.

I attended an early consultation and light metro-small heavy rail system was exactly what was recommended by Kinki Sharyo. They argued that it was more appropriate than LRT based on projected ridership and climate. And then of course, the city's planners got ridiculously fixated on the idea of running LRT on the street at the end of the line.....

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by corynv

There are options. Could use battery based trains. Could also use a capacitor based system (like the New Castle trams do), can also do a 3rd rail option (either always live, or a segmented one like Alstom has in a few places. Though personally with how much snow we get here, and it being an open system i'd rather not go with that).

Both the Battery and Capacitor ones would require recharge points along the line, and i'm not sure how long it'd take to recharge (also how many points they'd need for proper coverage).

There's also contactless induction power transfer:

https://www.railway-technology.com/p...trams-germany/

Battery Electric or Fuel Cells are probably the way to go until the line can get funding to get twinned and electrified.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by DarthVader_1961

Could electrification be done without over hanging wires?

The power delivery method isn't the problem - the LRVs seem to be tripping due to environmental problems.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The power delivery method isn't the problem - the LRVs seem to be tripping due to environmental problems.

Agreed. There have been thousands of miles of overhead catenary powered electrical vehicles over the decades in numerous places just as snowy and slushy as Ottawa. If the catenary is a problem, it's particular to this catenary, not catenaries in general.

Also see: the five million Ottawans who still believe trains, in general, can't run in snow.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The power delivery method isn't the problem - the LRVs seem to be tripping due to environmental problems.

Exactly, but also, not *all* trains seem to be having this problem. So is it a design issue, or defects with parts/manufacturing on some vehicles, or a maintenance issue?

There's certainly urgency to get this figured out, and I'd like to hear more from Alstom, not just RTG. RTG subcontracts to Alstom, so they are both the maintainer and the manufacturer of the vehicles.