Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[zzptichka]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Somebody tweeted who was on the train in question and said that this happened when passengers were trying to exit the train. Other standing passengers were trying allow them to pass, which held the door open. There was no 'angry shove' or malice involved according to that report.

Others have commented that the dwell time at UOttawa station is not long enough to allow passengers to exit and that doors closed on exiting passengers, in some cases trapping them inside. This requires a timing adjustment.

So I guess all these problems are because of the highly-touted system automation.
Instead of a train driver just waiting until people unload/load and pushing a button to close doors like on any other system, computer does it for them automatically to maintain schedule cutting off bunch of people and breaking doors.
So great we have that cutting edge modern technology with all those many great features.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

So I guess all these problems are because of the highly-touted system automation.
Instead of a train driver just waiting until people unload/load and pushing a button to close doors like on any other system, computer does it for them automatically to maintain schedule cutting off bunch of people and breaking doors.
So great we have that cutting edge modern technology with all those many great features.

How does this work with heavy rail subway cars? Doors must be automated there too. As far as I know, nobody is watching all the doors before they are closed.

Don't heavy rail subway cars just have sliding doors? It seems that our LRT doors are not sliding doors, which likely adds to the complexity of their operation.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Capital Shaun

Pretty sure STO going to be using some of those bus lanes in a few months.

Is there any point moving before this is done:

https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/public-en...t-and-slater-streets-improvement-project

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

How does this work with heavy rail subway cars? Doors must be automated there too. As far as I know, nobody is watching all the doors before they are closed.

Don't heavy rail subway cars just have sliding doors? It seems that our LRT doors are not sliding doors, which likely adds to the complexity of their operation.

Last time I rode the TTC and recently in Boston they still have conductors riding at the back operator cab. They stick their head out the window and close the doors when it's clear.

[kmcamp]

Just stumbled across this article... Maybe "everything's fine" Manconi is taking his cues from the MBTA.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wcvb.co...elf-high-grades-for-reliability/13861863

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Definitely not a panacea in this case (I agree that more capacity should've been built-in), but this is one of the reasons I wish there were peak pricing in transit. Like with road congestion pricing, I think that it should be slightly more expensive to ride at peak, and less expensive to ride off-peak. When I lived in the Netherlands, I had a Dalurenskaart, which entitled me to transit from 9-16h and after 18h30, plus weekends and holidays, all at a significantly reduced price compared to the all-day pass. In my case, I would shift many of my trips to 9am, after the rush hour, and I'd just pay a little supplement (something like $1.00) when I really had to travel during the rush. I saved a lot of money, and the transit operator got less intensive peak-hour demands.

If you really think about it, it is kinda ridiculous that you pay the same to ride an empty LRT at 10pm on a Sunday as 08h30 on a crush-capacity Monday. If there were an $90/mo off-peak transit pass, I'm certain a lot of people would be happy to buy it, and that it would help reduce crowding at peak and boost ridership at other times.

Pricing is a powerful tool for accomplishing policy goals. We should use it as such.

Or we could just remove fares in off-peak hours

[rocketphish]

'Leave the doors alone:' Major LRT delay Tuesday morning was caused by someone trying to force open doors

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: October 8, 2019

Someone tried to force a door open on a train at uOttawa Station during the morning rush Tuesday, creating a domino effect that crippled the transit network at the worst time possible.

The major service delay during the morning peak period prompted transportation general manager John Manconi to provide a simple bit of advice to customers: “Leave the doors alone.”

It was only the second day of the new OC Transpo transit network backboned by the Confederation Line LRT.

Buses constantly empty passengers at Tunney’s Pasture, Hurdman and Blair stations during the morning rush. As the service slowed down Tuesday morning, passengers at Tunney’s Pasture were backed up from the platform to all the way outside the station.

During an afternoon press briefing, Manconi explained why the LRT line slowed down.

Around 8:05 a.m. a westbound train pulled into uOttawa Station and passengers got off the train, but there were still passengers exiting when the “doors closing” signal sounded.

According to Manconi, a customer pushed the doors with both arms while getting off, causing the doors to jam. “Negative manual intervention,” is how Manconi described it.

The operating system is designed so that a train can’t move when a door is jammed.

Manconi said the edges of the doors have very sensitive safety features so people aren’t caught in between the doors and dragged down the platform. The doors open if something is preventing them from closing. A door problem can be related to a software issue or mechanical issue. The cause of the door jam on Tuesday morning could be a mechanical issue and the technicians are investigating why they couldn’t reset the door, Manconi said.

“It got jolted or held back in such a state that those technicians couldn’t isolate the door,” Manconi said.

A door technician couldn’t solve the problem, and then the rail operator and an Alstom technician tried to fix the problem, but they couldn’t figure it out, either. Transpo had to let everyone off the train and put it out of service.

A “diversion service” started at 8:15 a.m. to get other trains around the inoperable train. Trains in both directions had to share a single track between uOttawa and Hurdman stations, reducing the train frequency on the LRT line to between 15 and 20 minutes from the five-minutes-or-less intervals customers usually experience at peak times. Transpo also activated replacement bus service at 8:30 a.m. between Hurdman and Tunney’s Pasture stations.

Service was restored at 8:43 a.m. It took until 9:16 a.m. to clear station platforms of people waiting to get on a train.

Manconi, who emphasized that the LRT line didn’t shut down, said Transpo is looking into the door problem and why staff couldn’t fix it at the station. He noted that Transpo has experienced some door issues on the trains and have addressed them.

“As with all modern train systems, doors have many features to ensure safety is never compromised and all doors must be in a fully closed and locked position for trains to move,” Manconi said.

The state of the doors — specifically, the sensors that dictate what happens when there’s an obstruction — was one of the city’s watch items as it pushed Alstom to make necessary adjustments to the trains earlier this year. While Manconi said door problems happen on rail systems, he didn’t say if there was a connection between the problem on Tuesday and the issues identified during Ottawa’s train testing.

Manconi said LRT doors open 86,000 times each day.

Transpo is also taking a close look at the door dwell times; in other words, the length of times doors stay open to let passengers off and on trains. Each station is different, depending on the volume of passengers. The doors have been operating in automated mode.

“The system’s going under massive calibrations,” Manconi said.

Manconi said Transpo has gone through scenarios like the one Tuesday morning during its drills. He apologized to customers for the service delay and thanked staff for handling it.

Transpo is looking into implementing more messaging, such as station announcements, when there’s a delay in service.

Manconi had advice for LRT customers to make everyone’s trip better, and even though the suggestions seem obvious, Transpo officials are watching behaviour that could impact service.

First, customers should use all 14 doors on the train for entering and existing trains, rather than using only a handful of doors. “We paid for those doors for a reason,” Manconi said.

Also, customers shouldn’t hold the doors or congregate around the doors on the trains or platforms, Manconi said.

Prepare to get off the train if your stop is coming up, rather than waiting for the last second, he said.

And one final tip: let people get off the train before getting on.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...ed-by-someone-trying-to-force-open-doors

[LeadingEdgeBoomer]

'Leave the doors alone:'

Maybe they need to write that on the doors

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Or we could just remove fares in off-peak hours

I'm not a huge proponent of free transit, personally. I'm not dead-set against it, but it just isn't a very effective way of moving people around. This is because in the places it's been implemented, transit ridership has gone up, not at the expense of car trips, but short-distance bike/foot trips. I can attest to this; when the Transitway was still running, I would often hop a free ride for a few hundred metres (say, from Bank to Mackenzie). Now that that's no longer an option, I just walk it. Although harmless in small numbers, these types of short "I could've walked, but hey, the bus was there" trips can be detrimental to the longer trips which actually require transit (due to crowding at entrances and overly frequent stops, notably). Melbourne's free tram zone exemplifies this, where people just grabbing a tram 200m crowd out those who needed it to travel 20 km who are left on the platform.

This doesn't mean that fares should be prohibitively high. Or even as high as they are now. But you want to charge at least a small fee to make sure that lazy bums such as myself don't crowd onto a bus just to get across the Mackenzie King bridge

[caveat.doctor]

Originally Posted by roger1818

That makes total sense. I can totally see someone getting mad that the door is closing before they can get off and giving it a big, angry shove.

That should get better with time. People are used to buses where they can sit in their seat until the bus comes to a complete stop and then yelling out will cause the driver to wait until you can make your way to the door. On a train, this isn't possible (or desirable) and the right thing to do is start making your way towards the door a stop before you need to get off.

Hopefully these early major failures will change people's behaviour quickly - if not by understanding then by the angry looks from fellow commuters.

Originally Posted by kmcamp

Last time I rode the TTC and recently in Boston they still have conductors riding at the back operator cab. They stick their head out the window and close the doors when it's clear.

With our automated system, the Vancouver Skytrain would be a closer comparison. I remember the doors there would automatically reopen and repeat the door closing announcement and try again. Apparently it tries to close again 3 or 4 times before going into "jam" mode and needing a reset.

Originally Posted by LeadingEdgeBoomer

Maybe they need to write that on the doors

They probably should - the "Press to open door when light turns green" also doesn't help, especially as it encourages people who are on the platform to stand right in the front of the doors and block those getting off.

-

Used Rideau station at afternoon rush (about 4 pm), tried the Byward Market entrance this time. Busy but good flow, not out of keeping with what you'd expect in Toronto, Montreal, NY, DC. Users on all four escalators seemed to have good etiquette, standing right, walking left.

Crowding at Tunney's continues to be suboptimal. Main pinchpoints are:

- stairs to/from the platforms: people continue to stand and block the escalators (and they're so short! I question the need for escalators at all here - a wider stairway would be better), and people aren't keeping right on the stairs to go either down or up, leading to standstills. Surprised by how lackadaisical the crowds seem to be, as if they didn't care about missing their bus

- doors to the north bus loop (D-G): the pathway is too narrow to accommodate the volume especially as the doors open into the path. Simple fix would be to remove the doors, as the station is open anyway. Walkway bypass was working well, there was also a red vest directing people heading to the stops further down

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Well, we implemented a design for post Phase 2, which is ridiculous when that is at least 5 years away.

One of my comments from my first experience, is that they need to clearly show the next train departure as you walk in the door from the bus station. I expect they are not willing or able to do this.

Also, I noted the lack of stair capacity, which is something that the public is commenting about today. Heaven help you if you are trying to go in the opposite direction this afternoon, when a train arrives.

I try my best to encourage people to take the easternmost staircase, since they seem to mostly use just the one and bypass the escalator

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I'm not a huge proponent of free transit, personally. I'm not dead-set against it, but it just isn't a very effective way of moving people around. This is because in the places it's been implemented, transit ridership has gone up, not at the expense of car trips, but short-distance bike/foot trips. I can attest to this; when the Transitway was still running, I would often hop a free ride for a few hundred metres (say, from Bank to Mackenzie). Now that that's no longer an option, I just walk it. Although harmless in small numbers, these types of short "I could've walked, but hey, the bus was there" trips can be detrimental to the longer trips which actually require transit (due to crowding at entrances and overly frequent stops, notably). Melbourne's free tram zone exemplifies this, where people just grabbing a tram 200m crowd out those who needed it to travel 20 km who are left on the platform.

This doesn't mean that fares should be prohibitively high. Or even as high as they are now. But you want to charge at least a small fee to make sure that lazy bums such as myself don't crowd onto a bus just to get across the Mackenzie King bridge

You do raise a good point. However, transit would only be free when there is lower demand, so the system would be able to handle the extra load. Naturally, when demand is highest we'd expect people to pay up or walk. Also included in the FTO demand is better service in general.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Why haven't we converted those bus lanes into segregated bike lanes by now? Seriously, the city seems in an awful hurry to eliminate the bus priorities before they know that the trains are functioning reliably.

Or before they know whether they might be useful for moving local buses within the city core. The city has spent the last decade making it HARDER to get a non-transitway bus into, out of, or through the urban core. Can we maybe stop doing that, and start undoing some of the anti-transit stupidity?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

People are used to buses where they can sit in their seat until the bus comes to a complete stop

Or where they HAVE TO sit in their seat until the bus comes to a complete stop because otherwise you risk injury thanks to stompy pedal-work.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by LeadingEdgeBoomer

Maybe they need to write that on the doors

The placebo buttons give passengers the illusion of control over the doors.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

This doesn't mean that fares should be prohibitively high. Or even as high as they are now. But you want to charge at least a small fee to make sure that lazy bums such as myself don't crowd onto a bus just to get across the Mackenzie King bridge

Those "lazy bum" trips should be a public policy goal: i.e., it should be easy and cheap to incorporate quick transit trips into your day-to-day life for all kinds of purposes... not just getting to and from a 9-to-5 white-collar job.

The new configuration of downtown transit takes a lot of those "lazy bum" type trips off the table of convenient things to do with a lunch hour: the LRT is great for what it was designed for, but the time penalties of descent/ascent and larger walk distances due to fewer stations come at the expense of, among other things, the lazy bum trips.

If we want to build a transit culture in this city beyond getting muddle managers to and from Transport Canada on weekdays, we have to consider us lazy bums, too. That's another reason why the disjointed kerfluckery that is the new downtown local bus route configuration is so infuriating. It makes it that much harder for residents of the old city of Ottawa to do regular everyday things by transit in the very part of the city that would, with the right transit tools, be the most amenable part of the city to transit-oriented living.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

I try my best to encourage people to take the easternmost staircase, since they seem to mostly use just the one and bypass the escalator

Is that the one that's also open to precipitation?

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Those "lazy bum" trips should be a public policy goal: i.e., it should be easy and cheap to incorporate quick transit trips into your day-to-day life for all kinds of purposes... not just getting to and from a 9-to-5 white-collar job.

I definitely agree that transit should be more than just a tool for commuting. I don't drive, so I depend on the non-commuting transit services. But what I'm talking about here isn't 1km bus trips back from the grocery, but rather sub-500m trips by active, able-bodied people. Too much of the former can needlessly degrade service for the latter, and then we're no further ahead in making transit a viable, dependable option for everyday activities. I'm not saying it should be banned (if there were even a way to do that), but it should be disincentivized just enough to keep it at a manageable level. Fares are a good way to do that.

[CityTech]

The U-Pass program already provides evidence of Aylmer's point. The 19 routinely gets clogged with young, able bodied U of O kids who take the bus for 2 stops down Laurier East instead of walking, all because its free.

[RegionalRoad31]

Bruuuuuuuuuh

Broken again and even more confusing than yesterday. Very frustrating.