Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Urbanarchit

And then watch them increase fares again saying, "If riders expect to receive the bus service they want, they have to pay more!" as Hubley claimed a few weeks back. The reason why they want to increase fares is because they don't want to raise taxes to help pay for transit, yet with a continually dropping ridership that pays for the service, they have a continually decreasing profit. Instead, they should address the actual concerns about reliability that is appalling and lower fares in order to entice people to actually use transit. If people think it's reliable, affordable, and will get them where they want to go on time, then ridership would increase.

I've said this to others, but I think John Manconi should resign (though he won't with his $280k salary) and they should select a councillor who actually cares about and understands transit issues, and that councillor and new General Manager should be required to ONLY take public transit to get around. That way, the Transportation Chair and GM will experience firsthand transit problems on a regular basis that they will be motivated to fix the problems and get things right from the start for new projects.

In a way several cost cutting measures led to losses in ridership and revenue. Before the Queensway widening plan was chosen for bus diversion, a new Transitway was to have been built to the east end and buses were to be diverted to it during LRT construction. I guess the cost was excessive but if it had been built, buses would have continued to operate efficiently during LRT construction, reducing or eliminating bus detour costs and we would have been less likely to have lost ridership and revenue. We would have also inherited a permanent new rapid transit route for the future.

[Gat-Train]

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.

It wasn't running completely fine. There were shutdowns and stalled trains. I was even on one (though thankfully it only stalled for about a minute)

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

This is poor economic analysis. Marginal utility. Econ 101. The pass becomes more valuable because it enables shorter, more discretionary trips. It's not folks who occasionally use transit, taking the LRT two stops or the bus a few blocks. It's people with a monthly pass. Whether you charge and cap (which is done on some GTA systems with Presto) or have a flat pass fare, makes little difference to this behaviour. Indeed, the entire point of charge and cap is to actually encourage transit usage by effectively giving "free" rides beyond normal commuting usage that pays for the pass.

What transit has a problem with is not general usage, but usage at specific time periods. The normal solution to this is to charge a premium at peak. But that can only work if you have road tolls as well. Otherwise, you get substitution. Commuters will drive instead of taking the train. Have peak road tolls and transit fares and then your peak demand curve will actually get flattened.

Better yet, eliminate fares off-peak, and you will likely see people adjust their commute/work hours

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Better yet, eliminate fares off-peak, and you will likely see people adjust their commute/work hours

Not many people can adjust their work hours to off peak hours. Those that can probably don't take transit anyway (because driving/parking is pretty easy if you can do it off peak).

[acottawa]

I have taken a good number of transit systems, some of them frequently, and the normal practice seems to be that the door will try to close once or twice, if it is still detecting an obstacle (such as somebody holding the door open) a fairly loud alarm sounds. I have never seen a system where the result of holding a door open is a jam.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I have taken a good number of transit systems, some of them frequently, and the normal practice seems to be that the door will try to close once or twice, if it is still detecting an obstacle (such as somebody holding the door open) a fairly loud alarm sounds. I have never seen a system where the result of holding a door open is a jam.

They do occur in other systems, but Ottawa is experiencing an order of magnitude more incidents. A lot of this is OC Transpo's inexperience, running the slow and low volume Trillium line is very different than a metro line.

The other problem is LRTs use plug doors rather than sliding doors, so a door jam is more likely than on say a Montreal train.

The TTC, being far more experienced than us, had Bombardier uograded the new TTC streetcar doors from standard, expecting issues like this. They are more resistant to being forced open

It's hard to compare us to others as we are brand new to this. We're the first city in Canada or the US to join the metro club since the 80s. Recent LRTs in the states aren't running like ours, nor do any of them come close in ridership. The closest comparable is Seattle, but they started with a pair of 30 meter trains running at 10 minutes in rush hour, nowhere close to the levels of fault tolerence we need. The next city that will have a metro is Honolulu, it will be interesting to see how they fare.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

They do occur in other systems, but Ottawa is experiencing an order of magnitude more incidents. A lot of this is OC Transpo's inexperience, running the slow and low volume Trillium line is very different than a metro line.

They may not be comparable in overall passenger volume, but the per-train loading % is very comparable. Those Trillium line trains can be packed.

People of course, often force those doors too and they don't really break. I've heard of delays on the line because of door faults, but nothing like on the Confederation line.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

They may not be comparable in overall passenger volume, but the per-train loading % is very comparable. Those Trillium line trains can be packed.

People of course, often force those doors too and they don't really break. I've heard of delays on the line because of door faults, but nothing like on the Confederation line.

I'm not saying there isn't a door problem in general. The Citadis trains obviously are too easily being put into a catastrophic fault, which is on Alstom to fix. But like everything its a big combination of factors that get us here. 13 trains instead of 15 = overcrowding at peak morning + inexperienced operator + inexperienced users + incorrect dwell times + overly fragile doors + forced transfer onto LRT for centretown routes = disaster. Removing any single variable would greatly reduce the number of incidents

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

They do occur in other systems, but Ottawa is experiencing an order of magnitude more incidents. A lot of this is OC Transpo's inexperience, running the slow and low volume Trillium line is very different than a metro line.

The other problem is LRTs use plug doors rather than sliding doors, so a door jam is more likely than on say a Montreal train.

The TTC, being far more experienced than us, had Bombardier uograded the new TTC streetcar doors from standard, expecting issues like this. They are more resistant to being forced open

It's hard to compare us to others as we are brand new to this. We're the first city in Canada or the US to join the metro club since the 80s. Recent LRTs in the states aren't running like ours, nor do any of them come close in ridership. The closest comparable is Seattle, but they started with a pair of 30 meter trains running at 10 minutes in rush hour, nowhere close to the levels of fault tolerence we need. The next city that will have a metro is Honolulu, it will be interesting to see how they fare.

Plug doors are pretty common. Most commuter rail systems use them (including crowded ones where passengers have direct assess to the platform), so do many modern metro systems (including Copenhagen).

[rocketphish]

Another train malfunctioned...

[orleans_man]

Looks like there is another Breakdown today @ Bayview Station around 7:30am. 3 days in row. Yikes.

Hope it does not last as long as the other ones...

Link

[Truenorth00]

Trains from the East are short-turning at Lyon. Forced transfer of all pax going further east.

Asked an attendant when I saw the board times if the train was broken down. "Apparently. This train is a piece of s..t.". Poor attendants taking crap:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...bassadors-on-the-front-line-of-lrt-chaos

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

I think it was quite clear that the doors closing on you or your appendage this would trigger the doors to open again. It is not until you forcefully pry them open that the shitshow occurs. I would suggest mob rules for anyone caught prying the doors open.

Once again, this is caused by insufficient time to get off. People aren't just doing this for fun. They are getting caught trying to get off or on.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

They do occur in other systems, but Ottawa is experiencing an order of magnitude more incidents. A lot of this is OC Transpo's inexperience, running the slow and low volume Trillium line is very different than a metro line.

...

It's hard to compare us to others as we are brand new to this. We're the first city in Canada or the US to join the metro club since the 80s. Recent LRTs in the states aren't running like ours, nor do any of them come close in ridership. The closest comparable is Seattle, but they started with a pair of 30 meter trains running at 10 minutes in rush hour, nowhere close to the levels of fault tolerence we need. The next city that will have a metro is Honolulu, it will be interesting to see how they fare.

While all of this is true, we all know they'd have far fewer incidents if they had more trains running and they were less packed, and their dwell times were more reasonable. The politicians and senior leadership simply don't want to admit they were wrong. So now they've taken to threatening the transit using public.

Watch the number of door incidents drop substantially once there's 2-3 more trains in service.

[AuxTown]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

While all of this is true, we all know they'd have far fewer incidents if they had more trains running and they were less packed, and their dwell times were more reasonable. The politicians and senior leadership simply don't want to admit they were wrong. So now they've taken to threatening the transit using public.

Watch the number of door incidents drop substantially once there's 2-3 more trains in service.

I agree that probably needs to be part of the long/medium-term solution but something needs to be done short-term. I would hope there are engineers/technicians/experts from Alstom either here already or on their way as this needs some kind of fix and fast!

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

I agree that probably needs to be part of the long/medium-term solution but something needs to be done short-term. I would hope there are engineers/technicians/experts from Alstom either here already or on their way as this needs some kind of fix and fast!

They have them on pretty much every train already, so don't get your hopes up. This is going to happen pretty much every single day until they put more trains in service, the best short-term solution would be to continue all Tunney's connexion routes downtown and take some of the load off.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Plug doors are pretty common. Most commuter rail systems use them (including crowded ones where passengers have direct assess to the platform), so do many modern metro systems (including Copenhagen).

I didn't say they weren't common, I said they were more susceptible by their very nature. Ours however are particularly fragile it seems. My totally non expert guess would be plug doors would fail slightly more often than sliding due to the more complex mechanism. We have an order of magnitude failure here. A door jam shouldn't knock it out of it's track, but it does, and door jams are happening for all the reasons I mentioned

[daud]

Graham Richardson on CFRA this morning spoke with a witness to the latest breakdown and its not a pretty picture for the "door"

The witness said the doors were just closed and a passenger stepped up to the door and simply pushed the button. The door reopened, passenger gets on and then the door will no longer close. That's it. No shoving, no prying, just pressed the button which led to a broken door.

People will push the button on a closed door, they will hold doors and will even pry doors. That's human nature. To build a system (door) that can't manage these things is ridiculous.

To OC transpo's credit, it seems they really stickhandled the situation better this time. Service seems to have resumed 15 minutes later.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

I agree that probably needs to be part of the long/medium-term solution but something needs to be done short-term. I would hope there are engineers/technicians/experts from Alstom either here already or on their way as this needs some kind of fix and fast!

There's a solution. Run the parallel bus service until they have the full complement of trains they originally planned. Keep running the cross-town bus service to give cross-town travelers a ready alternative, until Stage 2 is complete, at minimum.

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by Urbanarchit

I've said this to others, but I think John Manconi should resign (though he won't with his $280k salary) and they should select a councillor who actually cares about and understands transit issues, and that councillor and new General Manager should be required to ONLY take public transit to get around. That way, the Transportation Chair and GM will experience firsthand transit problems on a regular basis that they will be motivated to fix the problems and get things right from the start for new projects.

Please yes! Hubley obviously doesn't take public transit since he wasn't able to name a single OCTranspo route number when asked this week. It should be a requirement that the transit chair actually take transit. Manconi probably needs to be fired for cause but I'd let him step down with dignity if he promised doing it soon.