The Great Canadian Transit Thread - Page 658

Metro-One · #**13141** Posted **Nov 1, 2019, 9:50 AM**

And here is the diagram for the Broadway / Cambie hub station.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpongeG

new renders out

all of them: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/skytrain...tl9efH-HW4RcqI9K1sA18JnAhi3H4DO9qxPSASaQ

Reecemartin · #**13142** Posted **Nov 1, 2019, 4:16 PM**

[Deleted]

Kisai · #**13143** Posted **Nov 1, 2019, 11:26 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

And yet for all that "backlash", ridership has still been pretty successful and there's no evidence yet, that the growing pains are massively translating to long term drops in ridership.

ahem.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...ys-hes-furious-with-poor-lrt-performance

Quote:

The city will put 40 buses back on the road and has freed up an additional $3.5 million as a “short-term fix” for its beleaguered O-Train after Mayor Jim Watson apologized to commuters Friday for the system’s poor performance.

“To say I am furious with the poor performance of our LRT system is an understatement,” Watson tweeted during Friday’s morning commute when delays again plagued commuters. “Both RTG and RTM will be held to account for the problems that have frustrated our very patient transit users.”

Should have built an automated system in the first place.

MalcolmTucker · #**13144** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 12:05 AM**

The problems right now are from the system being too automated, and the assumptions built into that automation.

Metro-One · #**13145** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 12:54 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The problems right now are from the system being too automated, and the assumptions built into that automation.

?

Automation seems to work fine in Vancouver and other cities around the world.

SFUVancouver · #**13146** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 1:30 AM**

Those who live without automated rapid transit cannot imagine life with it, and those who live with automated rapid transit cannot imagine life without it.

rakesh · #**13147** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 1:43 AM**

BC is the best run province the country right now. Kudos to BC NDP and the city council ain't bad either. Ontario and Alberta are screwed. JK more dangerous and DF. He will destroy whatever's left of AB in the next 3 years. The LRT expansions in Calgary and Edmonton are virtually dead now.

lrt's friend · #**13148** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 4:18 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metro-One

?

Automation seems to work fine in Vancouver and other cities around the world.

Time will tell in Ottawa, but it has been a disaster during the first month of service. Ottawa has eliminated too much parallel bus service, unlike Vancouver and other cities. The lack of transit redundancy means that a single train failure brings the whole transit network to almost total collapse.

Metro-One · #**13149** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 3:14 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Time will tell in Ottawa, but it has been a disaster during the first month of service. Ottawa has eliminated too much parallel bus service, unlike Vancouver and other cities. The lack of transit redundancy means that a single train failure brings the whole transit network to almost total collapse.

But that is not the fault of automation, just poor transit planning. You still want to have local parallel bus service.

milomilo · #**13150** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 4:05 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The problems right now are from the system being too automated, and the assumptions built into that automation.

Could you expand on this?

MalcolmTucker · #**13151** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 4:28 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by milomilo

Could you expand on this?

At the start, the system wasn't responsive. Even if the train wasn't full, and people were still loading, the doors would start closing at 24 seconds. If the train was still unloading at 24 seconds, the doors would close. Schedule adherence was placed above all else, to the point that those efforts hurt schedule adherence. For customers used to overriding robust bus doors, this caused an Ottawa unique problem. In the end would customers rather have a one train wait at a forced transfer caused by the trains falling behind, or a shutdown caused by a few bad actors trying to override the train's efforts to adhere to schedule? There just wasn't resilience built in.

Imagine instead that the driver was in control for the entire in station stage (or had the option to be), and then solely released the LRT to the automatic control to travel to the next station when the doors were closed. Sure, maybe they would fall behind at busy stations. But the dwell could be less elsewhere.

MalcolmTucker · #**13152** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 4:39 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metro-One

?

Automation seems to work fine in Vancouver and other cities around the world.

Yeah, not all automation is created equal. And even then, dropping Skytrain into the tunnels instead of Ottawa's system I don't think solves the problem, which is a culture problem, combined with design inflexibility setting dwell times the same for all stations. Ottawa's requirement for ppdph is very high, and most users have no familiarity with trains, let alone automated trains.

MalcolmTucker · #**13153** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 4:52 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Time will tell in Ottawa, but it has been a disaster during the first month of service. Ottawa has eliminated too much parallel bus service, unlike Vancouver and other cities. The lack of transit redundancy means that a single train failure brings the whole transit network to almost total collapse.

Perhaps in hindsight they should have scaled down parallel service over 5 months, instead of all at once to let customers learn over time. In the end, when you decide to use trains you have a single point of failure. Ottawa's problem isn't that there isn't redundancy, because in a year you won't want nearly any, it is that the problems causing failures shouldn't exist, because the train doesn't have resiliency.

Nouvellecosse · #**13154** Posted **Nov 2, 2019, 5:01 PM**

Sounds like an issue with the programing rather than with automation itself. They should know that busy stations would need higher dwell times compared to intermediate station. It also shouldn't be so traumatic to the system for a train to not be able to close it's doors on first attempt. This is a problem that many systems face and I've seen public transit agencies with both automated and manual systems actually have public relations campaigns aimed at discouraging the public from forcing the doors and causing delays. This isn't something unique to Ottawa, unique to automation, and isn't really something complicated enough to require manual driver intervention.

Seems to be that the issue is simply one of newness and inexperience. They're making stupid mistakes because they don't know what they're doing (yet).

rbt · #**13155** Posted **Nov 3, 2019, 12:52 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Sounds like an issue with the programing rather than with automation itself.

Hope so as that's fixable.

If the door closing mechanism doesn't have any knowledge of the station (not networked to receive that information) then this is going to be a challenging fix. A dumb timer is by far the simplest hardware mechanism to implement; open door on 5 volt signal on line, close 20 seconds later. I assume if the operator had a manual button they would have been instructed to use it at certain stations already.

corynv · #**13156** Posted **Nov 3, 2019, 3:25 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbt

Hope so as that's fixable.

If the door closing mechanism doesn't have any knowledge of the station (not networked to receive that information) then this is going to be a challenging fix. A dumb timer is by far the simplest hardware mechanism to implement; open door on 5 volt signal on line, close 20 seconds later. I assume if the operator had a manual button they would have been instructed to use it at certain stations already.

That's a non-issue. Day 1 they had the ability to program the time doors were opened at each station. And they've changed some problem stations already. Even have the ability to program it based on time of day (have longer dwell during rush hour for example).

J.OT13 · #**13157** Posted **Nov 11, 2019, 1:43 PM**

Ottawa O-Train. In red and green are the existing and Stage 2 lines (2001-2025), totaling 64 kilometers and 41 stations.

In orange (Barrhaven, 10 km and 7 stations) and purple (Kanata, 11 km, 8 stations) are Stage 3. If all goes according to plan, the entire network as currently invisioned should be completed by 2030, assuming a non-stop building phase. The network would total 85 kilometers and 56 stations.

https://www.otrainfans.ca/forum/topic/29...-steps/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-1674

Reecemartin · #**13158** Posted **Nov 11, 2019, 1:44 PM**

[Deleted]

p_xavier · #**13159** Posted **Nov 11, 2019, 1:52 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Ottawa O-Train. In red and green are the existing and Stage 2 lines (2001-2025), totaling 64 kilometers and 41 stations.

In orange (Barrhaven, 10 km and 7 stations) and purple (Kanata, 11 km, 8 stations) are Stage 3. If all goes according to plan, the entire network as currently invisioned should be completed by 2030, assuming a non-stop building phase. The network would total 85 kilometers and 56 stations.

https://www.otrainfans.ca/forum/topic/29...-steps/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-1674

I really wonder if OC Transpo will be able to operate such a long Confederation line with high availability...

lrt's friend · #**13160** Posted **Nov 11, 2019, 3:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by p_xavier

I really wonder if OC Transpo will be able to operate such a long Confederation line with high availability...

One wonders given the number of failures during the first two months of operation and it doesn't seem to be improving much.