Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

It was mentioned in the meeting that it's ventilation systems tests that need to be completed.
Edit: Oops, posted above right before me^

Good Day.

Cool - Thx. I do indeed hope that's all it is.

[lrt's friend]

I find it strange that winter worthiness has been a problem on the Confederation Line and that special measures will need to be taken to keep snow off the track. To my knowledge, similar problems have never arisen on the Trillium Line since it opened in 2001 with the exception of switch issues. What made Talent and Lint trains more able to deal with snow than the Citadis trains that we have purchased for Confederation Line?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I find it strange that winter worthiness has been a problem on the Confederation Line and that special measures will need to be taken to keep snow off the track. To my knowledge, similar problems have never arisen on the Trillium Line since it opened in 2001 with the exception of switch issues.

Maybe the German rural trains are better suited for winter than French trams.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Maybe the German rural trains are better suited for winter than French trams.

I suppose thinking about it, the trams are used in places like Moscow, but they are used on street, not in our kind of usage. On street would mean plowed regularly, versus the Lints which are mainline trains.

Did we study what places like Minneapolis or Boston do for their operations in winter?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

I suppose thinking about it, the trams are used in places like Moscow, but they are used on street, not in our kind of usage. On street would mean plowed regularly, versus the Lints which are mainline trains.

Did we study what places like Minneapolis or Boston do for their operations in winter?

Boston gets dumps of snow from time to time but it usually melts pretty quickly. Minneapolis is cold but doesn’t get nearly as much snow as Ottawa most years. It is hard to think of a city other than Montreal with comparable weather.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

LRT builder nets unflattering hat trick after city confirms RTG will miss third handover deadline

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 5, 2019

The Rideau Transit Group can’t finish the $2.1-billion Confederation Line LRT system by a March 31 deadline, while city council needs to decide Wednesday if it wants to spend $4.6 billion more to expand the O-Train network.

RTG says it can deliver Stage 1 of the LRT system sometime in the second quarter of the year, which means by the end of June.

“OC Transpo is ready. The public is ready,” John Manconi, the city’s transportation general manager, told reporters Tuesday after a finance and economic development committee meeting.

“Every person I talk to can’t wait for the system. You’ve all told me that individually, and yeah, it’s been delayed. But really complicated things that are worth it need good oversight, which we’ve done, and safety and reliability has been the cornerstone of this and that’s what we continue to do.”

Manconi said he learned last Friday that RTG would miss this month’s deadline, the third time the builder hasn’t been able to complete the 12.5-kilometre LRT line by a promised handover date. The previous deadlines were May 24, 2018 and Nov. 2, 2018.

The LRT contract gives RTG 60 days to propose a new handover date, but the company says it won’t need the full 60 days to identify when the city will get the keys.

It was only on Feb. 12 that Peter Lauch, the chief executive of RTG, told councillors at a finance committee meeting that the company would deliver the LRT system by March 31. City hall bosses didn’t buy it.

Lauch, who appeared again at the finance committee meeting on Tuesday, said the fleet availability and testing status at the end of February compelled him to notify the city that a March 31 handover wasn’t going to happen.

The city will penalize RTG another $1 million for missing this deadline, just like it did for missing the November 2018 deadline. The penalty didn’t apply to the May 2018 deadline.

Councillors went digging for specifics of the holdup, knowing that 24 hours later they would be asked to approve rail extensions across Ottawa as part of the Stage 2 project. The expanded LRT system will also use the same Alstom Citadis Spirit trains engineered for Stage 1.

Council’s decision on Wednesday is about awarding contracts to extend LRT to Trim Road, Algonquin College and Moodie Drive, and extend the Trillium Line to Limebank Road and the Ottawa International Airport. Council is scheduled to vote on awarding the Confederation Line expansion contract to Kiewit and Vinci and the Trillium Line expansion contract to SNC-Lavalin.

Six councillors — Rick Chiarelli, Diane Deans, Jeff Leiper, Catherine McKenney, Shawn Menard and Carol Anne Meehan — want council to delay the vote until March 27 so politicians fully understand the implications of the Stage 2 program.

As for Stage 1, Manconi seemed confident that RTG could get the job done on by the end of June.

Testing and commissioning of the trains and the paperwork on safety certification are the major things standing in the way of the city’s receiving the LRT system.

The 13 stations are nearing completion, with all but Tunney’s Pasture, Parliament, Rideau and St. Laurent stations ready for occupancy.

All 34 LRT vehicles have been built and are available for testing. Twenty-four of the Thales on-board control computers have been certified. So far, as many as 15 vehicles have been tested on the tracks at once, but the city wants to see the system stress-tested with at least 20 running at the same time.

A major test using 15 coupled trains — which are two vehicles joined together, and four other vehicles on standby — needs to be perfect before the city takes possession of the LRT line, since that’s the service plan for the busiest times in the transit system.

Train operations in winter conditions consumed much of the committee meeting.

The trains have been cold-weather tested at the National Research Council, and although Manconi noted the Citadis parent model is used around the world, including in cold-weather climates, he said those cities might not have comparable snowfall to Ottawa.

When it comes to snowfall, it’s not about the trains — it’s about keeping the tracks clear, he said.

RTG’s maintenance arm, Rideau Transit Maintenance, which has a 30-year LRT maintenance contract with the city, is tweaking its winter procedures in response to what the company learned about operations over the winter. The company has acquired a “melter” machine to help rid the rails of snow and ice. In heavy snowfalls, Transpo will run trains overnight to keep the tracks clear.

With a delivery date projected in the April-June window, RTG might not get to a necessary 12-consecutive-day test period of the full fleet during the most wintry conditions of the year.

Mayor Jim Watson said he believes there has been lots of time to test the rail system in an Ottawa winter and, he noted, there’s still all of March.

“I have every confidence that the systems are going to be fully tested out,” Watson said. “We won’t sign off or accept a substandard or unsafe product from RTG.”

RTG is likely burning through borrowed money since the company hasn’t received a dime from the City of Ottawa since February 2018. The city halted the “milestone” payments to RTG because there have been no milestones for which to compensate the builder.

There was no information during the meeting about the financial state of RTG.

Lauch said after the meeting he didn’t have time to answer questions from reporters.

The city has frozen transit fares until July 1 because the LRT system isn’t ready yet. Watson said he would be open to continuing the freeze until the LRT system opens, but the decision is up to council.

The mayor couldn’t say when transit customers would be riding the trains.

“I’ve given up predicting what date it’s exactly going to fall to,” Watson said.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...ms-rtg-will-miss-third-handover-deadline

I find this statement rather disingenuous. Had they met the second (November 1) date, they wouldn't have done any of the 12-day testing in wintry conditions. Even the original (May 24) date wouldn't likely have had any of the 12-day testing in wintry conditions.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Boston gets dumps of snow from time to time but it usually melts pretty quickly. Minneapolis is cold but doesn’t get nearly as much snow as Ottawa most years. It is hard to think of a city other than Montreal with comparable weather.

True, but it's the dumps of snow that matter really from an experience perspective. It's what happens during a snowstorm that people are concerned with mostly, not sunny but cold winter days. You don't need an exact match to extrapolate. However it seems they did learn that they need more equipment, so something did come out of this experience

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

True, but it's the dumps of snow that matter really from an experience perspective. It's what happens during a snowstorm that people are concerned with mostly, not sunny but cold winter days. You don't need an exact match to extrapolate. However it seems they did learn that they need more equipment, so something did come out of this experience

True. It's like I tell my kids, "A mistake isn't a mistake if you learn from it, it is a lesson."

I have said this before, but the problem was that not only did they decide to stop running trains during the snow storm, but they left a train on the tracks and it got stranded. Not really normal operating procedure.

It says in post #9611 that, "One daily incident report recommended that cars not drive over 35 mm of snow." While that may not seem like much snow, if you consider the minimum frequency of service is every 15 minutes, I can't imaging getting that much snow in such a short amount of time.

Overnight is the bigger issue, but then they can either continue to run empty trains at night during the storm or get out the snow clearing equipment. For the former, they probably only need 1 (or maybe 2) trains in operation, as there is no need to stop at stations, so they could probably do the round trip in 30 minutes.

[OTownandDown]

I'm really appalled at how much speculation is circulating, without any actual information provided from RTG or the City.

People are so quick to jump to the craziest solutions, and the CBC this morning was being so argumentative, and for what? No wonder Manconi and RTG don't want to share information... For a simple site review form that explained the train under review had not demonstrated performance in winter conditions. To me this statement doesn't mean the trains can't perform, they just haven't actually been able to demonstrate performance.

The trains aren't running regularly, snow clearing isn't regularly done, construction is still underway. So why assume the sky is falling when one train gets stuck in a massive snowstorm at night? It's not as though under full load operating conditions the system shut down. Everyone focuses on the smallest detail and blows it way out of proportion.

The fact is, RTG is reponsible for maintaining the rail for 30 years. You think they'd just forget about snow and ice?

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

CBC this morning was being so argumentative, and for what? No wonder Manconi and RTG don't want to share information... For a simple site review form that explained the train under review had not demonstrated performance in winter conditions. To me this statement doesn't mean the trains can't perform, they just haven't actually been able to demonstrate performance.

CBC was asking tough questions, but they gave Manconi a chance to explain himself like he did at the FEDCO meeting. As the CBC said, many of their listeners don't follow the City as closely as we do, and Manconi should have been able to give them the same answers he gave committee. The fact that he didn't was a failure on his part, not on the part of CBC.

[Ottawaresident]

Manconi isn't too bad, just ignorant.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

CBC was asking tough questions, but they gave Manconi a chance to explain himself like he did at the FEDCO meeting. As the CBC said, many of their listeners don't follow the City as closely as we do, and Manconi should have been able to give them the same answers he gave committee. The fact that he didn't was a failure on his part, not on the part of CBC.

Well sorry, but the 'public' doesn't really always have a right to know the nitty-gritty details of a construction project. Not this giant one, and not smaller ones either. And Joanne digging up dirt-sounding internal reports and presenting them as factually sound arguments as to why the train is a big fail is irresponsible and probably ethically wrong. She actually has no idea what she's talking about, the context of providing single, internal reports are far overblown, and now all the NIMBY's and preachy crazies are piling on, creating this huge distracting whirlwind. Focus on the end goal, as Manconi said. That's what's important.

Acting like everyone is entitled to every detail, like Manconi said, is actually insane. The experts are working on the job, not us. We have no right to judge them until the project is deemed complete by the experts. That's why there's a contract, and contract law.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Well sorry, but the 'public' doesn't really always have a right to know the nitty-gritty details of a construction project. Not this giant one, and not smaller ones either. And Joanne digging up dirt-sounding internal reports and presenting them as factually sound arguments as to why the train is a big fail is irresponsible and probably ethically wrong. She actually has no idea what she's talking about, the context of providing single, internal reports are far overblown, and now all the NIMBY's and preachy crazies are piling on, creating this huge distracting whirlwind. Focus on the end goal, as Manconi said. That's what's important.

Acting like everyone is entitled to every detail, like Manconi said, is actually insane. The experts are working on the job, not us. We have no right to judge them until the project is deemed complete by the experts. That's why there's a contract, and contract law.

I do not disagree to a great extent, but the fact remains that Manconi addressed all of these points much better during the FEDCO meeting. He came off as indignant and stand-off-ish during the interview with CBC and didn't explain these points well.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

I do not disagree to a great extent, but the fact remains that Manconi addressed all of these points much better during the FEDCO meeting. He came off as indignant and stand-off-ish during the interview with CBC and didn't explain these points well.

I blame that on Bresnehan. She started it by being pushy and indignant herself.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

I do not disagree to a great extent, but the fact remains that Manconi addressed all of these points much better during the FEDCO meeting. He came off as indignant and stand-off-ish during the interview with CBC and didn't explain these points well.

Remember that Manconi had not even seen the report concerning the winter reliability of the trains. Where did this report come from and why had Manconi not been given access to it? It was something that had been around for at least a few days and was not new information this morning.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

I'm really appalled at how much speculation is circulating, without any actual information provided from RTG or the City.

People are so quick to jump to the craziest solutions, and the CBC this morning was being so argumentative, and for what? No wonder Manconi and RTG don't want to share information... For a simple site review form that explained the train under review had not demonstrated performance in winter conditions. To me this statement doesn't mean the trains can't perform, they just haven't actually been able to demonstrate performance.

The trains aren't running regularly, snow clearing isn't regularly done, construction is still underway. So why assume the sky is falling when one train gets stuck in a massive snowstorm at night? It's not as though under full load operating conditions the system shut down. Everyone focuses on the smallest detail and blows it way out of proportion.

The fact is, RTG is reponsible for maintaining the rail for 30 years. You think they'd just forget about snow and ice?

When a train gets stuck in the snow and is towed back to the maintenance yard and this becomes public, it has to be addressed. Test operations are not being run under some black cloak of secrecy. We all can go down to the right of way and watch what is happening.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Remember that Manconi had not even seen the report concerning the winter reliability of the trains.

There seems to be some incredulity coming from Joanne Chianello about this notion.

If she has the report why doesn't the CBC publish it verbatim on their website?

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

There seems to be some incredulity coming from Joanne Chianello about this notion.

If she has the report why doesn't the CBC publish it verbatim on their website?

My only guess, publishing the report verbatim might identify the leak.

I also find that some of the reporting of late has a shade of sensationalism to it. We want bugs to be found during testing. Most importantly, we want them resolved as well.

But the city and RTG really aren't helping themselves with their poor communication.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

I blame that on Bresnehan. She started it by being pushy and indignant herself.

Agreed. I find that she has been very abrasive lately. I've heard three interviews on different topics in the last week in which she lashed-out at the interviewee for not providing the answer she wanted to hear. This is a morning show, not investigative journalism. I cringed.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Remember that Manconi had not even seen the report concerning the winter reliability of the trains. Where did this report come from and why had Manconi not been given access to it? It was something that had been around for at least a few days and was not new information this morning.

Remember that Chianello was just picking and choosing her words to sound sensationalist enough that people would read her story, which unfortunately worked.

"Report" likely meant internal status update from a junior train technician back to the rest of the team regarding the interim status of the trains during testing phase.

"Vehicles are currently unreliable to the point that it has not been demonstrated that operations can be sustained during a winter weather event,"

So basically, the vehicles aren't finished yet, and the requisite demonstration had failed (I.E. the demonstration they had tried by running the train in the extreme snowstorm we had). To me, this would be a normal internal report to issue from a technician to a manager. If the report was intended to be public, I GUARANTEE you the language would have conveyed a similar message, but it definitely wouldn't be up for the interpretation of the CBC.

I ask, since that time, what actions have been taken? The answer: Mind your own business, they're still working on delivering the train and system.