O-Train Line 2 [Stage 1 | Bayview to Greenboro] | In Service

[Gat-Train]

Alstom has come out with a hydrogen-fuelled LINT https://futurism.com/hydrogen-powered-trains-are-coming-to-germany-in-2021

Perhaps we could use their model on the airport spur.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Alstom has come out with a hydrogen-fuelled LINT https://futurism.com/hydrogen-powered-trains-are-coming-to-germany-in-2021

Perhaps we could use their model on the airport spur.

wishful thinking. We already have our LINT trains.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Alstom has come out with a hydrogen-fuelled LINT https://futurism.com/hydrogen-powered-trains-are-coming-to-germany-in-2021

Perhaps we could use their model on the airport spur.

Good Day.

Note the date on that article - November 2017.
I proposed it both in this thread, and, to the mayor, the chair of the transit commish, the chair of the transport commish, and my councilich, at that time.
I noted our Lints as common equipment, the push to Green, the PR bonus, the support from Alstom for running a live trial / test. every button I could think of.
It would have fit the T-Line to a MAX-T, perfectly. (And - it would have supported Canadian industry - the fuel cell / battery manufacturer is Ontarian. !!!)
I got a couple comments in this thread,
....... !!!!! and bupkis from Council !!!! Nada. Nothing. Crickets. !!!!!!
I didn't care about credit.... they coulda taken it all. Nope - <nothing> !

A very POOR show from our purported leadersh!#.

<disappointed> !

[RomanR27]

*delete*

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

One more image of the a Trillium train stopped at the Bayview lower platform.


https://twitter.com/OC_Transpo/status/1167014127727984641

Even though it’s only a few weeks away from opening, they could have papered over those directional signs to Line 1 Downtown and Tunney’s Pasture to avoid confusion for people unfamiliar with the bus connections. I suppose this goes along with OC Transpo prematurely changing the maps in the bus stops to display currently useless information.

[J.OT13]

We took the Trillium Line yesterday evening for kicks to see the new Bayview Station. We did Carling-Greenboro-Bayview. The displays were all screwed up. Carling Station only displayed the next two trains to Greenboro, Greenboro had the next two trains to Carling (yes, displayed Carling, not Bayview) and the train left the station when the countdown was at 6 minutes. Bayview's display had nothing.

Worth mentioning that the displays used on the Trillium Line are the same LCD screens as Transitway Stations. It can be hard to read due to the small font, and I imagine very difficult, if not impossible, when the sun is reflecting off of them. I would much prefer if they had the Confederation Line's displays.

Trillium Line offers a poor service with a slow and bumpy ride. Once the Confederation Line opens, that will be even more evident. Stage 2 Trillium will not help in any significant way. In fact, it might make the service even worse for those currently using the original line. Opting for longer trains and platforms instead of better frequency will see to that.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We took the Trillium Line yesterday evening for kicks to see the new Bayview Station. We did Carling-Greenboro-Bayview. The displays were all screwed up. Carling Station only displayed the next two trains to Greenboro, Greenboro had the next two trains to Carling (yes, displayed Carling, not Bayview) and the train left the station when the countdown was at 6 minutes. Bayview's display had nothing.

Worth mentioning that the displays used on the Trillium Line are the same LCD screens as Transitway Stations. It can be hard to read due to the small font, and I imagine very difficult, if not impossible, when the sun is reflecting off of them. I would much prefer if they had the Confederation Line's displays.

All of OC Transpo's displays are currently having problems.

Trillium Line offers a poor service with a slow and bumpy ride. Once the Confederation Line opens, that will be even more evident. Stage 2 Trillium will not help in any significant way. In fact, it might make the service even worse for those currently using the original line. Opting for longer trains and platforms instead of better frequency will see to that.

One difference post-Stage 2 may be faster end to end times (at least between Greenboro and Bayview). The time spent slowing down/stopping in the sidings is pretty bad at Brookfield and Gladstone, though this time might just be replaced with dwell time at Walkley and Gladstone. Still more effective use of time though.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We took the Trillium Line yesterday evening for kicks to see the new Bayview Station. We did Carling-Greenboro-Bayview. The displays were all screwed up. Carling Station only displayed the next two trains to Greenboro, Greenboro had the next two trains to Carling (yes, displayed Carling, not Bayview) and the train left the station when the countdown was at 6 minutes. Bayview's display had nothing.

Worth mentioning that the displays used on the Trillium Line are the same LCD screens as Transitway Stations. It can be hard to read due to the small font, and I imagine very difficult, if not impossible, when the sun is reflecting off of them. I would much prefer if they had the Confederation Line's displays.

Trillium Line offers a poor service with a slow and bumpy ride. Once the Confederation Line opens, that will be even more evident. Stage 2 Trillium will not help in any significant way. In fact, it might make the service even worse for those currently using the original line. Opting for longer trains and platforms instead of better frequency will see to that.

The city says its good enough until 2048. Now you see why everybody from the inner southern suburbs are being directed to Hurdman. The bus Transitway is faster and as we saw with yet another service interruption on Friday, more reliable. I simply cannot depend on the Trillium Line to get me to my destination on time and that is without taking another mode of transit from downtown. We will see again next Thursday, when I have to use it the next time.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We took the Trillium Line yesterday evening for kicks to see the new Bayview Station. We did Carling-Greenboro-Bayview. The displays were all screwed up. Carling Station only displayed the next two trains to Greenboro, Greenboro had the next two trains to Carling (yes, displayed Carling, not Bayview) and the train left the station when the countdown was at 6 minutes. Bayview's display had nothing.

Worth mentioning that the displays used on the Trillium Line are the same LCD screens as Transitway Stations. It can be hard to read due to the small font, and I imagine very difficult, if not impossible, when the sun is reflecting off of them. I would much prefer if they had the Confederation Line's displays.

Trillium Line offers a poor service with a slow and bumpy ride. Once the Confederation Line opens, that will be even more evident. Stage 2 Trillium will not help in any significant way. In fact, it might make the service even worse for those currently using the original line. Opting for longer trains and platforms instead of better frequency will see to that.

Two things might improve in Stage 2 for the original line. The countdown clocks are just on a 12 minute schedule, in Stage 2 the city says they will revisit so they would use the actual train position.

The other improvement is that the longer sidings and better signaling is supposed to remove that slow boat to China feeling when trains come to a crawl when they need to pass. The Trillium line is much faster when running on a 15 minute schedule and trains only pass.at Carleton.

Not nearly as good as double tracking, but better than nothing

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

Two things might improve in Stage 2 for the original line. The countdown clocks are just on a 12 minute schedule, in Stage 2 the city says they will revisit so they would use the actual train position.

The other improvement is that the longer sidings and better signaling is supposed to remove that slow boat to China feeling when trains come to a crawl when they need to pass. The Trillium line is much faster when running on a 15 minute schedule and trains only pass.at Carleton.

Not nearly as good as double tracking, but better than nothing

Are the bus route displays also "blindly" following the schedules on paper or do they have tracking (like the app)?

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Are the bus route displays also "blindly" following the schedules on paper or do they have tracking (like the app)?

The answer is both for buses. If the time has an * beside it's GPS based, otherwise its just the scheduled time. Every time it snows it always falls back to scheduled time, they might as well turn it off when that happens.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Alstom has come out with a hydrogen-fuelled LINT https://futurism.com/hydrogen-powered-trains-are-coming-to-germany-in-2021

Perhaps we could use their model on the airport spur.

Hydrogen-powered trains wouldn't be a very good choice for the Trillium line. Hydrogen fuel cells are best on lines that are too long for battery power and not frequent enough to pay for the cost of catenary.

While elemental hydrogen is very common, hydrogen gas (H2) is rare and is expensive to make. The cheapest way to make H2 is a process called steam reforming, which converts natural gas into H2 and Carbon Monoxide (CO). The problems with this process are:

• It uses a lot of energy to make steam,
• It uses fossil fuels (typically natural gas),
• It isn't carbon neutral, and
• It results in a fuel with less potential energy than the source fuel.

The other way to produce H2 is through electrolysis of water. This can be carbon neutral (if your source of electricity is carbon neutral), but the process of electricity to H2 back to electricity (with a fuel cell) is less efficient than storing electricity in a battery (both would use and electric motor to drive the train), especially when you consider the need to compress the H2 (which also takes energy) to store it in a reasonable volume.

Since the line is so short, we would be better off charging batteries at the terminus stations, or better yet, installing catenary to avoid the inefficiencies of battery storage.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

Even though it’s only a few weeks away from opening, they could have papered over those directional signs to Line 1 Downtown and Tunney’s Pasture to avoid confusion for people unfamiliar with the bus connections. I suppose this goes along with OC Transpo prematurely changing the maps in the bus stops to display currently useless information.

They did no such thing: they prematurely changed the actual transit maps into completely useless transit diagrams.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

The answer is both for buses. If the time has an * beside it's GPS based, otherwise its just the scheduled time. Every time it snows it always falls back to scheduled time, they might as well turn it off when that happens.

At some places like Greenboro, which is a terminus, most routes lack the * because the buses haven't started their route yet. Live GPS tracking doesn't help you if you're at the first stop on the route.

The Trillium Line doesn't have GPS tracking or any other mechanism to update the displays, so it always shows the "scheduled" time. It almost never matches the actual time. It's next to useless, unfortunately.

[RomanR27]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

At some places like Greenboro, which is a terminus, most routes lack the * because the buses haven't started their route yet. Live GPS tracking doesn't help you if you're at the first stop on the route.

The Trillium Line doesn't have GPS tracking or any other mechanism to update the displays, so it always shows the "scheduled" time. It almost never matches the actual time. It's next to useless, unfortunately.

Anecdotal, but I took it pretty frequently during September - April to get from my job downtown to Carleton. It was consistently running about two minutes ahead of schedule. If I aimed to be at Bayview for that time I never had any issues.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by RomanR27

Anecdotal, but I took it pretty frequently during September - April to get from my job downtown to Carleton. It was consistently running about two minutes ahead of schedule. If I aimed to be at Bayview for that time I never had any issues.

I've had the same experience. Other than VIA-related delays, or when it's running a 15-minute schedule, the times line up well.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

At some places like Greenboro, which is a terminus, most routes lack the * because the buses haven't started their route yet. Live GPS tracking doesn't help you if you're at the first stop on the route.

Yup. This is infuriating on the local routes which start downtown, leaving you without any way of knowing whether a no-show bus is delayed or cancelled or what... and on top of it, for many trips, you also now have to "commit". You can wait for a 12 to take you from downtown to Montreal/St. Laurent, or for a 7, but you no longer have any stop where you can wait for both routes at once. Real wait times have increased (individual routes have become less reliable), and effective wait times have increased as well (you have to commit to waiting for route X or route Y, so you can't take advantage of a Plan B bus coming along first.)

All in all: the bus system is designed and run by people who've never had to wait for a bus in their lives.

[lrt's friend]

Can the city do anything right with the Trillium Line?

The electronic schedule boards are so screwed up, they should put a bag over them until they are working correctly. At Greenboro, they post two times, both the same. I assume they are trying to post the next two trip times. At Carling, they post two times for each direction. Unfortunately, all four times displayed are exactly the same, which is clearly impossible and incorrect. I watched as the north bound train departed Carling, all four times changed to 12 minutes later, while the next train was arriving long before that. Useless and misleading information.

Of course, the Trillium Line continues to operate as an entity to itself with no consideration to whether it connects with local buses at Greenboro. Again, it arrived one minute after my local bus departed. Fortunately, I had been on the previous train, which made an inefficient transfer.

They are now making a big deal of taking your bike to the transit at Greenboro Station. Unfortunately, no bike path actually goes to Greenboro Station, with all the dedicated paths ending several blocks away or blocked by the Trillium Line. At South Keys, it appeared that the MUP connecting the station to the pedestrian bridge was closed.

We are making excellent progress.

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Yup. This is infuriating on the local routes which start downtown, leaving you without any way of knowing whether a no-show bus is delayed or cancelled or what... and on top of it, for many trips, you also now have to "commit". You can wait for a 12 to take you from downtown to Montreal/St. Laurent, or for a 7, but you no longer have any stop where you can wait for both routes at once. Real wait times have increased (individual routes have become less reliable), and effective wait times have increased as well (you have to commit to waiting for route X or route Y, so you can't take advantage of a Plan B bus coming along first.)

All in all: the bus system is designed and run by people who've never had to wait for a bus in their lives.

Totally agree. The way all the routes are routed downtown is just ridiculous. The city could have turned Queen into a transit corridor if they wanted... but that oh so precious parking.

The city even does this crap at some TransitWay stations.

At Blair, going towards Beacon Hill:
The 12, 24, 224 are at same stop. The 23 is on the other platform.
After LRT kicks in:
The 12, 23, 24 are at the same stop, now the 224 is on the other platform.
WTF! Just can't have all 4 routes at the same stop?

[lrt's friend]

I am fully expecting ridership on many bus routes to crash because they have been truncated where riders don't want them truncated. Some routes are being redirected where riders don't want to go. The former issue more relates to cross-town routes.