Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[kmcamp]

Meantime in Toronto...... I take back everything I've said about regretting deep stations

"There is no subway service between Lawrence and St. Clair stations on Line 1 after construction work may have damaged a tunnel, according to the TTC.

Engineers are determining the extent of the problem and whether any structural damage was done.

Stuart Green, spokesperson for the TTC, said the damage is believed to have occurred between Lawrence and Eglinton stations after a private contractor drilled through a concrete subway tunnel liner."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ttc-subway-service-disruption-lawrence-st-clair-1.5331189

[lrt's friend]

Again, about a two hour train interruption between Blair and St. Laurent station, between just before 9 am to just before 11 am. Reported on CTV News.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/service-resume...ne-after-track-switching-issue-1.4649754

https://twitter.com/whineandjeez

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Again, about a two hour train interruption between Blair and St. Laurent station, between just before 9 am to just before 11 am. Reported on CTV News.

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/service-resume...ne-after-track-switching-issue-1.4649754

https://twitter.com/whineandjeez

I was at Hurdman when it happened. The delay on the rest of the line was fairly minimal. A train had just left then the countdown timer went to 9 minutes, then quickly went back again to 5 minutes, if I was delayed at all it was probably only 1 minute

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by corynv

Metrolinx would. The Flexities they're getting for the cross-town each only have 1 cab on them, and they'll always be running in coupled units, the cab being at the end. Plus if more cities want a light metro like ottawa, having an option for more seating/standing room by taking a cab out of each LRV is something they can look at.

I think you are confusing the Flexity Freedom with the Flexity Outlook.

The Flexity Outlook has cabs at one end, but it is the replacement for Toronto's street cars, and as such operate on Toronto's unique broad gauge.


Flexity outlook 4403 heading south, 2014 08 31 (8) (14918534190)
booledozer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Flexity Freedom has cabs at both ends and will be used on Toronto's LRT lines. It runs on standard gauge, same as the Citadis Spirit.


Ion Flexity Freedom 507 Queen Station
Radagast [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

I was at Hurdman when it happened. The delay on the rest of the line was fairly minimal. A train had just left then the countdown timer went to 9 minutes, then quickly went back again to 5 minutes, if I was delayed at all it was probably only 1 minute

I expect they were able to minimize the delays on the rest of the line.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

In Ottawa's case, it is harder, or rather, you don't gain that much. You just can't rearrange a good portion of the seating, as it is over the wheels. https://www.otrainfans.ca/confederation-trains/alstom-citadis-spirit

Seems to me that the 2x2 perpendicular benches on either side of the doors could just be replaced with parallel benches (for 2 or 3 people) and you could fit like 30 more passengers standing

Nevermind, i see what you mean now. But why don't both sides of the priority seating flip up? The priority seating should be the two jump seats on the wheel well. Old people like travelling facing the direction of travel anyways

[J.OT13]

I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. According to @Rail613 on Twitter, the reason the City went with side platforms for Tunney's was because of limitations caused by sewer lines under the Transitway trench. That information came second-hand from David Jeans of Transport Action.

https://twitter.com/rail613/status/1186740281263247361
https://twitter.com/rakerman/status/1186629287086100480

[lrt's friend]

Single track service operating in the last hour between Hurdman and Ottawa U. No mention of the reason.

It seems like there are problems almost every day. How is this reliability problem going to be solved?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Single track service operating in the last hour between Hurdman and Ottawa U. No mention of the reason.

It seems like there are problems almost every day. How is this reliability problem going to be solved?

The doors issue will be fixed by dwell time increases, and perhaps eventually allowing train operators to control the doors rather than having a fixed time, and reducing schedule adherence to increase overall reliability. Oh, and name and shame with big fines for forcing doors.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Single track service operating in the last hour between Hurdman and Ottawa U. No mention of the reason.

It seems like there are problems almost every day. How is this reliability problem going to be solved?

Bad Day.

It's almost always the GD doors. All on Alstom, both for the design and build, and for the maintenance.
(ALL maintenance including trains, tracks, comms, bldgs, etc - RTM contract to Alstom (and they ain't talking - at all ! )).

One solution, sarcastically and only half-jokingly..... per The Beaverton :
- OC Transpo recommends Ottawa commuters leave for work a week earlier -

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/10/oc-...commuters-leave-for-work-a-week-earlier/

Real solution..... good question. Seems most door incidents are at uOttawa.

NoJoy!

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. According to @Rail613 on Twitter, the reason the City went with side platforms for Tunney's was because of limitations caused by sewer lines under the Transitway trench. That information came second-hand from David Jeans of Transport Action.

https://twitter.com/rail613/status/1186740281263247361
https://twitter.com/rakerman/status/1186629287086100480

Are their times when there are no trains at Tunney's? In other cities due to the time needed to change which end the operators are at, there is always a train at the station, and it is pretty easy even without any signage to know which one is leaving next. This problem might just solve itself as people get more used to the rhythms of how trains work.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Are their times when there are no trains at Tunney's? In other cities due to the time needed to change which end the operators are at, there is always a train at the station, and it is pretty easy even without any signage to know which one is leaving next. This problem might just solve itself as people get more used to the rhythms of how trains work.

Good Day.

As it is right now, it would be possible that the only time there is no train at Blair or Tunney's is at low service times, late night. I do not know if they have achieved this, as it seems at present they are operating with 13 trains at all times, from open to close - no low period train removal, as had been planned.

Long term, as they get this sucker running properly (!), we shall see what they do.

Meantime, EnJoy full-time train presence at the terminals. I think it's better this way.

[Horus]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Are their times when there are no trains at Tunney's? In other cities due to the time needed to change which end the operators are at, there is always a train at the station, and it is pretty easy even without any signage to know which one is leaving next. This problem might just solve itself as people get more used to the rhythms of how trains work.

Originally Posted by PHrenetic

Good Day.

As it is right now, it would be possible that the only time there is no train at Blair or Tunney's is at low service times, late night. I do not know if they have achieved this, as it seems at present they are operating with 13 trains at all times, from open to close - no low period train removal, as had been planned.

Long term, as they get this sucker running properly (!), we shall see what they do.

Meantime, EnJoy full-time train presence at the terminals. I think it's better this way.

In my (admittedly limited) experience at Tunney's, there are often times with no train present. My observations are that a train pulls in to either platform (on an alternating basis), unloads, load, leaves and then the next train arrives. This results in a short lull of a few minutes when no train is present.

I agree, it would be preferable if they could bring a train in to the empty platform before the train on the other platform departs.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Single track service operating in the last hour between Hurdman and Ottawa U. No mention of the reason.

It seems like there are problems almost every day. How is this reliability problem going to be solved?

There are basically daily operational issues at the STM and the TTC. The impact of those métros are less because there's another line available. The Azur trains had reliability issues for 18 months, the Rockets for about a year (door issues). The Azur trains have had about a thousand modifications (physical and software).

This is the reality of a modern rail system. Legacy streetcars don't have these issues because everything was manually operated. Heck, the Bombardier streetcars in Toronto still have major issues to this day...

Same issue that's now in Ottawa :
https://torontosun.com/2012/12/05/ttc-bo...wcm/9f5fb645-9edd-4612-9b97-2e6c9da7fa43

[lrt's friend]

You really have to wonder about the value of this degree of automation when the reliability of both the hardware and software seems to never get fully resolved.

As someone who works in software development, I see this problem every day. As designs become more and more sophisticated, bugs become more and more difficult to eradicate. In the software industry, bugs are often called 'features' to force the user to work around issues and because nobody has the resources to fully eliminate bugs.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You really have to wonder about the value of this degree of automation when the reliability of both the hardware and software seems to never get fully resolved.

Yeah - seems that the degree of automation implemented makes the train operators not even button pushers, just a human in the loop collision avoidance system.

[corynv]

Originally Posted by roger1818

I think you are confusing the Flexity Freedom with the Flexity Outlook.

I am not. Bombardier has a verient of the Freedom, for the Englington crosstown, that has only 1 cab.

Here's a video of people on one of the line 5 LRVs, if you skip to about 0:44 you'll see the non-cab end with seating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxJqWHK1sIg

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by corynv

I am not. Bombardier has a verient of the Freedom, for the Englington crosstown, that has only 1 cab.

Here's a video of people on one of the line 5 LRVs, if you skip to about 0:44 you'll see the non-cab end with seating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxJqWHK1sIg

Yes, this came up on the UT forum. In fact people were wondering when they go to 3 LRV operation of they could have a no cab train as the middle one. Still it's more wasted space than what we have with couplers and such.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by Horus

In my (admittedly limited) experience at Tunney's, there are often times with no train present. My observations are that a train pulls in to either platform (on an alternating basis), unloads, load, leaves and then the next train arrives. This results in a short lull of a few minutes when no train is present.

I agree, it would be preferable if they could bring a train in to the empty platform before the train on the other platform departs.

Especially when I've been at Tunney's it seems the operator really needs to boot it to make it to the other end in time. I witnessed an incoming train stopped once because the operator hadn't made it into the cab

[bartlebooth]

I feel like there was a change in dwell times tonight at Tunney's. Trains seemed to be leaving much quicker than I have seen so far. Anyone experiencing something similar?