Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Truenorth00]

Another jammed door at Lyon. Trains are now rolling again. Short turning at Lyon.

This is really not a good look. They cheaped out on rolling stock. Now they are crowded and breaking down. And senior city staff and councillors seem to be in complete denial.

[daud]

I’m not on the train but the photos on twitter are showing another disaster day. People being moved to buses, overloaded stations.

This is really not good. I feel for Transpo but these doors suck.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by daud

I’m not on the train but the photos on twitter are showing another disaster day. People being moved to buses, overloaded stations.

This is really not good. I feel for Transpo but these doors suck.

Commuters are giving up and hopping the fence:

https://twitter.com/sproudfoot/status/1181911939057885184?s=19

They can't even do Short turns well. My westbound train got the short turn revised from Lyon to Rideau. Sucks for everyone going downtown.

It's like Manconi and the non-riding Transit Council are working overtime to convince people to drive.

[J.OT13]

We took transit this morning.

First bus cancelled. Second bus showed up. Standing room only near the end, but not crush load.

Get off at Blair to transfer. OC staff pointing to the "eastbound" train and I'm like, screw this let's take the empty "westbound" and wit 7 minutes. Doors are closed and board says "Platform x closed".

So we get on the "eastbound" and find a seat, the face to face next to the driver cab. A minute later, that "westbound" leaves. Was it broken and heading to the yard OR, maybe they are testing 14-15 trains?

A few minutes later, our train leaves. Standing room only, but still plenty of space. OC staff tell people to go deeper in the train. Cyrville, no one. Tremblay, a few got on. Hurdman's platform was full. Opened the doors a few seconds and then the driver says "another train behind, we're closing the doors". Lees and uOttawa, a few get on and off. Rideau, same. Parliament, exodus. I have to get up to let the girl next to me off. Pretty tough considering the number of people. Not crush, but hard to move our of the way.

And Lyon, our stop. We're at the front next to the cab. We get up. My partner is able to get to the door, but I wait for others to get up and walk towards the door. At the end of the aisle, the door closing announcement and chime goes off. Takes me another 3 seconds to get out. Doors did not close or attempt to close in that time (I would not have gotten out had they closed and instead switched at Pimisi). Doors finally close a few seconds after I exit.

So my observations, trains, at least from the east, are not crush until Hurdman (had everyone been allowed on). Low floor trains were a mistake; aisles are too narrow and doors too far. Doors too few (better than Trillium, but not as many as Vancouver or Montreal). Dwell times are not long enough (and they seemed to try and fix that today with a lot of manual overriding), OR they need more trains. Cramming people in the aisles is what delays the system.

[Capital Shaun]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Is there any point moving before this is done:

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

The city's official plans are written like almost zero buses will be on Albert/Slater.

But STO's plan says otherwise.

So who really knows what will happen?

[J.OT13]

I think we should keep the Albert-Slater bus lanes until Stage 2 is fully opened. We've utilized those lanes twice in three days due to the poor reliability of trains.

[Truenorth00]

All of this can be fixed with more trains. That's the only solution. Fewer trains means more people on. Which means longer dwell times necessary. Which means folks getting caught in doors. This mess will continue until they either return bus service. Or add more trains.

And thanks to the rolling stock they picked, they will need to buy more than originally planned. Their planning assumptions on how people will board, and where they stand, are junk. And I'm guessing the result of political pressure rather than professional planning.

[acottawa]

It is too bad that in the extensive time the Eastern section was basically done they didn't do any testing with real humans instead of running empty trains up and down the line for years. Some of these problems would have come up

[J.OT13]

A break-up letter to OC Transpo. No, that's not me.

https://twitter.com/JFClaude/status/1181917099289141250

We REALLY want to switch to transit, but if this kind of crap continues on a regular basis, we might just keep driving. The City and OC are failing hard if they can't get two people who are desperate to stop driving in rush-hour traffic to make the switch.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by LeadingEdgeBoomer

Maybe they need to write that on the doors

Right next to the sticker that says "THIS BUTTON DOESN'T DO ANYTHING STOP PUSHING IT"

[phil235]

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.

I take your point, and don't understand how they could have miscalculated to this degree. Some accountability would be nice.

That said, I would invite you to try to bike from the Bay Street bike lane to anywhere in the central or west side of downtown. With Sparks street now closed, there is literally no east-west route north of Laurier that is remotely safe.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Fares are a good way to do that.

(Smirks and pulls out a monthly pass.)

Yeah, you see this behaviour thanks to the uPass - U of O students who live just a few blocks from campus who will stupidly wait 5s and 10s of minutes for an already packed #19 (possibly the #16, too, but I rarely see that route during peaks) which then takes 5s of minutes to crawl 10 blocks, and then multiple minutes of unnecessary dwell time to disgorge those same lazy people who would have been better off, time-wise, just walking.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Right next to the sticker that says "THIS BUTTON DOESN'T DO ANYTHING STOP PUSHING IT"

So why is it there?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by phil235

I take your point, and don't understand how they could have miscalculated to this degree. Some accountability would be nice.

Too bad people will forget about this at election time. Watson has definitely lost my vote over this. And Tierney too. Not that it matters given how much he wins by.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

A break-up letter to OC Transpo. No, that's not me.

https://twitter.com/JFClaude/status/1181917099289141250

We REALLY want to switch to transit, but if this kind of crap continues on a regular basis, we might just keep driving. The City and OC are failing hard if they can't get two people who are desperate to stop driving in rush-hour traffic to make the switch.

OC Transpo would have botched high floor too, they would have probably done something Canada Lineesque

The sad thing is that we all knew OC Transpo would fail on the switch over. They will eventually realize their mistake and do what other cities do and always have some parallel service rather then forcing every commuter into a single point of failure. Ridership will likely fall in the next little while (non transit users, your commute is about to get worse). They'll also goof the first couple of snow storms. In 6 months things will be running smoothly and this will be the distant past, but they could have skipped right to the end rather than having this totally unrealistic plan. Why do we have to fail and then do what we should have done all along.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It is too bad that in the extensive time the Eastern section was basically done they didn't do any testing with real humans instead of running empty trains up and down the line for years. Some of these problems would have come up

I don't think that would have helped. The system was running completely fine during the 3 week transition period; the current issues stem from high load. A partial service in the east wouldn't have had that problem.

I think human user error is at least partially to blame. I haven't been on trains at peak yet but I can just picture Ottawidiots (TM) doing dumb shit like standing at the doors and blocking passenger access while the aisles are half-empty.

It sounds like they actually had staff on board trains this morning to tell people off for stuff like this. If they can keep that up for a week or two it'll help.

[Rico]

I just wanted to give some hope for you. Even though Vancouver's Skytrain works well and reliably now I remember the first year as lots of glitches and fails. Sucks for now but I am sure they will work through the issues, some tweaks to dwell times and hopefully extra trains should do it.

[CityTech]

I find it hard to believe they'd be testing the 2 missing trains at peak.

Does anyone know if they've been doing overnight testing of them?

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by CityTech

I don't think that would have helped. The system was running completely fine during the 3 week transition period; the current issues stem from high load. A partial service in the east wouldn't have had that problem.

I think human user error is at least partially to blame. I haven't been on trains at peak yet but I can just picture Ottawidiots (TM) doing dumb shit like standing at the doors and blocking passenger access while the aisles are half-empty.

It sounds like they actually had staff on board trains this morning to tell people off for stuff like this. If they can keep that up for a week or two it'll help.

My particular line of work actually is dealing with system failures in software. I see train designers are just like programmers, and always think of the green path and downplay "edge cases". The real world never works the way designers intend

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Right next to the sticker that says "THIS BUTTON DOESN'T DO ANYTHING STOP PUSHING IT"

And it takes a fairly long time for the doors to open. A few times, I was waiting for them to open and then assumed I had to push the button.

OC's messaging on the button (always manual, always automatic, manual at some, automatic at others, no wait, all automatic), along with single vs doubles off peak (singles evenings and weekends, no just weekends, no always doubles) and the number of trains (we need 15 for prime time, they have to succeed the 12 days with 15, testing is over, they were able to achieve with the 13 required, it was always 13, what are you talking about million people contradicting me, always was 13 and I never said 15), has been very inconsistent.