Ottawa, a shiny new train, and the price of growing up
Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: August 23, 2019
The good news is the thing seems to actually work.
After a series of delays that made for painful comedy, after absorbing an Everest pile of money ($2.1 billion), Ottawa’s light-rail system finally accepted select passengers Friday — a giddy group of self-congratulating politicians, a pack of proud staffers and a suspicious media horde, about 100 in all.
The train left the eastern end of the line, Blair Station, at 1:05 p.m. and arrived at Tunney’s — 12 stations later — at 1:20 p.m. It was clear sailing, unlike the digging, the construction, detours, delays and excuses that nearly drove the city mad for six years.
“It is comfortable, it is impressive, it is fast. It’s going to be a completely different transit experience for the residents of Ottawa,” said Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, after emerging from Lyon Station.
“When I compare it to riding on a standing-only ride on the (No.) 95 on Scott Street, it is a night and day experience.”
Lyon, indeed, is a cavernous underground station, the likes of which is unfamiliar to the capital, used to crowded surface bus stops, rattling rides and beat-up shelters.
“You look at this Lyon Station, it’s hard to believe it’s Ottawa,” said Leiper. “In terms of the maturation of the city, the design aesthetic, this is big city stuff.”
The system still has, of course, that new car smell. The trains are spotless, as are the stations — which look a little plain and utilitarian, though there is a smattering of interesting public art.
The ride is fairly smooth, if a little louder than one might expect and there is the illusion of substantial speed. (It will never reach more than 82 km/h and is often way slower.)
There are spanking new blue seats, but passengers should expect to do a lot of standing at rush hour, with 300 or so in a single train. Visibility is great and there are unexpectedly grand views of the skyline.
When the train slips into the tunnel at uOttawa, it makes a whooshing sound and soon slows to take a fairly sharp left turn.
Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury brought his bicycle on the train, as did Bay ward Coun. Theresa Kavanagh, while Somerset ward’s representative, Catherine McKenney, had her tell-tale scooter.
“It’s fast. I’m impressed with the speed,” said Fleury, remarking that Rideau Station in his ward will be the busiest. “From what I can see, it looks great … It’s a transformative experience.”
Many of the passengers remarked on this point — that Ottawa, now just past the million mark in population, is entering a new era in public infrastructure.
“This is going to be the new normal,” said Kavanagh. “We’re all excited but, you know, this is what you should expect from a grown-up city. And this is what we’ve become.”
It will be a fairly comfortable ride. The trains are air-conditioned in summer and have heated floors for winter. At peak time, they come every five minutes.
As for testing, OC Transpo general manager John Manconi detailed the rigorous amount of checking the system has undergone: on 59 elevators, 47 escalators, 137 fare gates, 56 ticket machines, 1,200 closed-circuit cameras.
He was, however, grilled on the widely-understood idea that the city was not going to accept the system from its builders unless there were 12 consecutive days of error-free service that simulated an actual daily schedule.
It came as a surprise to councillors that Rideau Transit Group did not need perfection and was allowed two “repeat days” when it did not meet the “service availability” standard of 96 per cent.
Though it began on July 29, the 12 days of testing only concluded Thursday, setting up a full-service launch date of Sept. 14.
“There is no such thing as an error-free rail system anywhere in the world,” said Manconi.
In all, he said trains ran for 258,000 kms of testing and made close to 11,000 trips. There was never any major safety issue, he added, a shortcoming that would have forced the reboot of the testing period.
The briefing also heard that some 200,000 daily bus trips are going to be affected by the introduction of light rail. The old bus routes are going to continue post-launch, until new route alignments go into effect Oct. 6.
It’s a safe bet people will like LRT. It’s clean, fast, modern and loses the bone-shattering effects our old bus fleet provided on our patchy roads.
But we shall see. How well will the Tunney’s bus handoff work? How will the trains function on snowy days, or minus 30? How will we handle a train breakdown in the downtown tunnel?
These were not, however, Friday’s concern. It was a day to look at the new toy, in awe, the biggest change in transit service in our history, a new era in how we live and move.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email
kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...-of-growing-up
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