Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[JCL]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

Bluesfest will be an interesting test this Summer as well. Probably some of the biggest crowds our LRT has seen to date. That is, of course, if they don't cancel Bluesfest!

Canada Day comes first before Bluesfest!

[AuxTown]

Originally Posted by JCL

Canada Day comes first before Bluesfest!

True, but without a Parliament Hill stage I expect the crowds to be more dispersed and much less of a "crush" like you get with 60000 fans exiting Lebreton all at once.

[J.OT13]

We now know when to expect the Happy Goat kiosks at four Confederation Line Stations:

Happy Goat opening new caf​é inside Centretown Staples co-working space


Happy Goat Coffee has opened a location inside Staples' newly renovated store at 403 Bank St. (Photo provided)

David Sali, OBJ
March 6, 2020

-SNIP-

In addition, the chain won a bid to operate kiosks at four stations – Blair, Hurdman, Rideau and Tunney’s Pasture – on the new Confederation LRT Line. It expects to open the first two outlets targeted at train riders by the middle of April, with the others expected to be ready for business by the end of May.

...

Now at 110 employees, Happy Goat expects to reach a headcount of 170 once the LRT kiosks are up and running at full capacity this summer. There’s a lot brewing at the chain’s headquarters on Laurel Street in Hintonburg, but Assad says he sees plenty of room for much more growth ahead.

-SNIP-

https://obj.ca/article/happy-goat-opening-new-caf-e-inside-centretown-staples-co-working-space

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

True, but without a Parliament Hill stage I expect the crowds to be more dispersed and much less of a "crush" like you get with 60000 fans exiting Lebreton all at once.

Aren't they moving the concert to Major's Hill Park. Unless numbers are substantially down, we might actually have more concentrated access to public transit at Rideau Station, whereas it would normally be more dispersed to all three downtown stations.

[OCCheetos]

RTG is going to be served with a notice of default tomorrow. They'll have until the 31st to come up with a detail plan to fix all of the issues.

https://twitter.com/JonathanWilling/status/1237117997896159233?s=19

[sseguin]

The city's motion of default to RTG can be found here, along with the press release.

https://www.otrainfans.ca/news/confederation-line-stage-2-lrt-update-fedco-march-9-2020

In addition, Stage 2 LRT construction update presentation can also be found on the same page.

[CityTech]

They had a lengthy closed meeting before that and the council voted unanimously to issue it, so they must have solid legal and financial grounds.

[rocketphish]

'It’s time to give them a real kick in the pants': City threatens to end LRT contract

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 9, 2020

City council has sent a warning shot at the Rideau Transit Group (RTG), threatening to end the LRT maintenance contract if the company doesn’t fix the problems with the $2.1-billion Confederation Line.

The caretaker agreement with RTG’s affiliate Rideau Transit Maintenance (RTM) is a 30-year deal, but the city after only about six months of full LRT operations is ready to go nuclear if it doesn’t hear credible fix-up plan from the company.

“It’s time to give them a real kick in the pants to smarten them up,” Mayor Jim Watson said after a closed three-hour council session Monday afternoon.

Watson said sending a notice of default to RTG on Tuesday will be an unprecedented procurement move by the city.

“We’ve given them six months. We’ve seen some improvements, but clearly not enough to satisfy the public or members of council,” Watson said

Council, in the public part of the special meeting, voted 19-0 to send the notice of default and give RTG until March 31 to come up with a credible plan to fix the maintenance problems. There was no debate about the measure in the open session of the meeting.

The notice of default, which is a formal note that says RTG isn’t meeting the minimum performance standards of the contract, will come from the city’s rail construction director Michael Morgan.

Council is scheduled to get another update on April 8. RTG’s plan will be expected to have a time frame within which the company can cure the problems. Staff will assess the timeline before reporting back to council.

However, Watson said he hopes to have the LRT maintenance problems to be fixed by the end of summer “at the very latest.”

The city stressed that LRT service won’t be further disrupted because of the notice of default and that taxpayers will be “protected” under the LRT contract.

What the city doesn’t know is whether RTG will mount a legal challenge to the notice of default.

The city and RTG have a list of legal disputes going back to the construction of the LRT system. The city has been charging to RTG any extra costs related to LRT unreliability and has been holding back monthly maintenance payments, a move that staff have said RTG is challenging.

City manager Steve Kanellakos said the city hasn’t taken such a strong step with other major contracts.

“It’s a very serious step within the project agreement,” Kanellakos said. “It basically is putting them on notice that we’ve taken the first step to terminate the contract should they not rectify the issues that they have not been able to meet and we’re going to outline what those issues are.”

The city is especially disappointed with one of RTG’s subcontractors, train provider Alstom.

Watson provided an example of a serious LRT maintenance problem: it’s taking too long to get Alstom train parts to Ottawa from a Brampton facility or the U.S. It should be taking one or two days, but it’s taking multiple days, he said.

And according to Watson, maintenance workers aren’t working around the clock to fix any train problems.

The problems across the entire LRT system have included door jams, computer malfunctions, flat spots on train wheels, power faults and overhead wire breaks.

The RTG partner companies have built transit systems around the world, but somehow Ottawa isn’t receiving the level of service it deserves, even as Canada’s capital city, Watson said.

The partners behind RTG are ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin.

The reputation of RTG’s partner companies is “in tatters,” Watson said.

Transportation services GM John Manconi said “it’s not up to the city to hold (RTG’s) hand on those issues.”

Manconi said the city will outline all of its expectations to RTG “and we’re also going to be projecting forward so that there’s no more surprises down the road.”

It’s the responsibility of RTG’s maintenance arm to provide the Alstom Citadis Spirit trains necessary for OC Transpo to deliver service on the 12.5-kilometre LRT line.

For the busiest times on the LRT system, that means having 13 trains on the line carrying passengers between Tunney’s Pasture and Blair stations.

However, RTG has been having significant problems meeting that 13-train requirement. Over the past week, the company has been consistently providing 12 trains, although it was able to get the 13th train on the line for part of the Monday morning commute.

The city has had to pull buses from other routes across the Transpo system to feed a supplemental bus service at the peak hours along the LRT route.

The councillors not present for the vote Monday were Riley Brockington, Rick Chiarelli, Diane Deans and Scott Moffatt. Deans is on leave from council as she undergoes cancer treatment.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...whats-next-for-the-unreliable-lrt-system

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

RTG is going to be served with a notice of default tomorrow. They'll have until the 31st to come up with a detail plan to fix all of the issues.

https://twitter.com/JonathanWilling/status/1237117997896159233?s=19

Bad Day.

Here's a telling exerpt from JW twitter stream...... (he is still writing....) :

In the late-night finance committee meeting on the Stage 2 contracts, we learn from the city manager that Mayor Watson was told on March 5, 2019 about SNC-Lavalin not meeting the technical score threshold, one day before the council meeting authorizing the contracts.

The rough March 2019 timeline: March 4, city finds out a reporter is asking about the SNC technical score (h/t @jchianello); March 5, mayor is briefed on Stage 2 project, including matter of city using discretion to keep SNC in the game; March 6, council decision on contracts.

And So We Begin To See !!!

[J.OT13]

It took us 22 minutes to get from Blair to Lyon today. It used to be closer to 18. There were no delays, the trains just lingered longer at stations than usual. I didn't pay full attention, but I believe I heard whistles at some stations, but not all. According to a Tweet last week or the week before (OC?), at stations with no whistlers, the operator has to call the control centre before departing. If that was the case this morning, I could imagine that call taking longer than the simple whistler.

[Radster]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Sometime in the fall... I don't remember the exact day. Ken Woods had a Twitter thread about a door fault that had occurred during rush hour. The fault was fixed in about 10 minutes but that left a 10 minute service gap on the line.

In the thread he indicated that they launched a spare train (the 14th) onto the line to fill the gap.

Unfortunately with his account deleted, I can't give you the reference.

I don't remember that at all, instead, I do know that it has been well documented by the media since opening that the most we ever had on the line were 13 trains. They planned to release a 14th, but once all the issues started popping up and winter settled, that plan never materialised.

[Kitchissippi]

IIRC, I think they were running 14 or 15 trains to test timing but they were not all doubles

[rocketphish]

6 months in, Ottawa's LRT has had more bad days than good ones
CBC Ottawa has crunched the numbers on the Confederation Line's bumpy start

Andrew Foote · CBC News
Posted: Mar 13, 2020 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago



Six months after its flashy opening, the Confederation Line has had its schedule thrown off more days than it's run smoothly, and hasn't been able to string together more than five consecutive days of problem-free public transit since the transition from express buses ended.

OC Transpo customers funnelled aboard the electric Alstom trains that now serve as the only express route through downtown Ottawa have had a pretty miserable time of it, prompting calls for external reviews, fare relief and heads to roll.

Earlier this week, Ottawa city council voted to take the first step in the complex process of trying to get out of its contract with the line's builder and maintenance group.

All this while construction on a $4.66-billion LRT extension is underway.

As of the end of Thursday's afternoon peak, the Confederation Line has experienced problems causing delays, platform closures or requiring backup buses on 98 of the 180 days it's been open, or 54 per cent of the time.

By our count, the Confederation Line has had 114 separate problems, while the Trillium Line has experienced eight over the same period. Some last a matter of minutes, while others shut down a significant portion of the line for hours.

From Jan. 16 to 31, problems on the Confederation Line occurred daily, the longest streak of bad luck.

The city keeps careful track of how often it sticks to its "scheduled service delivery," but told CBC we'd have to wait for a March 18 transit commission meeting for the most recent statistics, including ridership numbers.
November was bleakest month

Since Oct. 6 the Confederation Line has enjoyed a single five-day run of uninterrupted service early in the new year — when many people were still on vacation.



In terms of days without a glitch, December was the best month, while November was the worst.



The most common issue tweeted by OC Transpo has been the catch-all "stopped" or "immobilized" train, followed by door and power problems.



Stations at the east end of the LRT have had more problems than those to the west.

Blair station has seen the most issues with a train or piece of equipment, with 14.

St-Laurent and uOttawa have each had nine, while Hurdman has had eight.

Pimisi station at LeBreton Flats has the best record with three.



Judging by OC Transpo's Twitter alerts, there have been more than 430 hours of schedule disruptions over the past six months.

Considering the LRT runs 20 hours on most workdays — Friday gets an extra hour at night — that's more than 21 full days worth of problems.

There's one view that the line has never run on schedule, because we've never had the 15 trains that we were promised operating at once.

Until late January, there were 13 trains on the line most days. Then the number dropped consistently and dramatically, with as few as seven trains on the track at some points.

There are also different ways to define an LRT issue. We know from our reporters and other riders that trains sometimes sit idle or platforms close without OC Transpo tweeting a service alert.

OC Transpo officials said in a response to an inquiry from a transit commissioner in November that there were 25 "events" on the Confederation Line — but OC Transpo had tweeted about 30 disruptions.

To compile our statistics, we've relied on these @OC_Transpo service alerts because they're direct from the source, and often include time, cause and location.

With files from Leah Hansen

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-lrt-schedule-problems-1.5492363

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

IIRC, I think they were running 14 or 15 trains to test timing but they were not all doubles

At one point,a few months before the 12 days of testing, I think they tested 20 singles on the track at once.

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

IIRC, I think they were running 14 or 15 trains to test timing but they were not all doubles

Originally Posted by J.OT13

At one point,a few months before the 12 days of testing, I think they tested 20 singles on the track at once.

Good Day.

To both of these, I can recall the same information, but I have no references.

Edit:

to 15 trains : https://www.ligneconfederationline.ca/news/construction-update-234/

Project Update
Over the July 13th weekend, 15 coupled trains were in operation at peak-service.

to 20 trains : https://www.ligneconfederationline.ca/news/construction-update-219/

Train Testing
Testing and commissioning activities are ongoing; significant progress has been made in the past few weeks. Crews have successfully been running 20 trains simultaneously on the alignment. Thales has also been testing the Computer Based Train Control (CBTC) system onboard these trains.

and : https://www.ligneconfederationline.ca/news/construction-update-220/

Train Testing
In recent weeks, 20 trains operated simultaneously in various configurations (single and double). Expect to see more coupled trains on the alignment in the coming weeks.

And this was noted in the press at the time.

It has led me to believe that most of the problems on the line limiting the number of concurrent trains have been other causes than the -base- computer control and location control systems. FWIW.

EnJoy!

[Richard Eade]

Of course, running a test, for a very short time, with multiple single LRVs is a very different thing than being able to run continuously with double-car trains in service. They could, conceivably, put a huge number of LRVs on the tracks and run them, VERY SLOWLY, only 100 metres apart. The ‘moving block’ system will allow vehicles as close together as the space they need to stop – in theory. But that is not a very useful transit system.

Even now, they can run a 'dead' train two minutes behind an active one, to get it to the MSF, but I have my doubts as to whether they could actually run 2-minute service continually on the line.

From what I have seen and heard; the trains are running about as fast as they can along the tracks, due to limits from the track geometry. It also appears that station dwell times are longer than anticipated. During wet and inclement weather, the train speed is degraded to ‘Type 2’ deceleration and acceleration curves – which has been mentioned as increasing the Blair to Lyon time from 18 minutes to about 22.

It is my fear that, similar to the promise of 8-minute service and the actual 12-minutes service for the Trillium Line ‘Expansion’, we will not be able to scale up capacity and speed on the Confederation Line to anywhere near what was implied.

[sseguin]

Memo: Notice of Default and Rectification Notice. These notices, sent to RTG by Michael Morgan (Director of Rail Construction), outline with some level of detail, the current issues and deficiencies of the Confederation Line.

https://otrainfans.ca/news/memo-notice-of-default-and-rectification-notice

[rocketphish]

City hammers RTG performance in notice of LRT contract failure
The so-called "notice of default" — a legal step triggering a process to potentially end the contract — lays out major shortcomings.

Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 13, 2020

Rideau Transit Group didn’t deliver the required number of trains for 25 consecutive rush-hour periods in January and badly flunked other basic performance standards, the City of Ottawa said in a blistering letter released Friday.

The so-called “notice of default” — a legal step triggering a process to potentially end the contract — lays out the major shortcomings in RTG’s 30-year contractual obligation to maintain and run Ottawa’s $2.1-billion light-rail system.

It also makes another devastating allegation: that RTG misrepresented itself as a consortium that was competent to maintain and run a new light-rail system intended to carry as many as 20,000 passengers per hour.

“It is clear to the City that RTG materially misrepresented its experience, knowledge, skill and capacity,” reads the letter to RTG’s CEO, Peter Lauch. The consequence, the letter continues, has been to damage the reputation of both the system and the city as whole.

The letter from the city’s rail director, Michael Morgan, explains how RTG is assigned “failure points” when key things go wrong — no system being perfect — and is allowed a certain number of “failures” in three- and six-month periods.

The contract stipulates 1,600 “failure points” in any six-month period before a default might be triggered. In roughly that period, RTG racked up 130,000 failure points, or roughly 80 times the permissible level.

“Even focusing only on major failures, as described below, the Default level has been exceeded by more than 300 per cent,” Morgan writes.

With regard to vehicle and station “availability” and system failures, “RTG has dramatically exceeded the three-month allowable total in each rolling three Contract Month period since the beginning of the Maintenance Term,” he adds.

In addition to the 25 consecutive rush-hour shortfalls, the letter says RTG failed to deliver the required 13 trains on 12 days in February.

The letter says the city will ask RTG to reimburse the extra costs incurred for “exercising its rights” and gives RTG until March 31 to come up with a plan to remedy the defaults. But it may not end there, Morgan hints in the letter.

“The City will then evaluate that plan and schedule and consider its next steps.”

The notice details some of the problems already well-known to commuters. Between Feb. 14 and 26, for instance, it cites the following: vehicle parts coming loose and damaging a transponder; brake faults and a fire in the Belfast maintenance yard; multiple vehicle failures on Feb. 22 that sent schedules off-track; the dropping of an overhead catenary wire on Feb. 26, forcing two stopped trains to be evacuated.

Ominously, the letter says things do not appear to be getting better, though the 12.5-kilometre system launched in September and many consultants have been brought on board.

“We have not seen any improvements in service and in fact service appears to have deteriorated further since the end of 2019,” it adds.

In a second letter to Lauch dated Wednesday, the city sets out its desired remedies. Among them is the provision of 15 working trains in service, a target RTG was supposed to hit by the end of 2019.

The other fixes read like a litany of the problems that have made Phase 1 the object of ridicule far beyond Ottawa’s boundaries. They cover seven pages in 14 broad categories.

It asks that RTG fix the inductor problems — the piece of electrical equipment that required covers to be retrofitted — and three significant issues with the overhead catenary system, including a problem with the “rigid rail” system that saw a stretch of wire ripped out by a passing train.

The city is also demanding a fix to the switch-heating system and the so-called flat-wheel problem. “A series of different scenarios appear to be contributing to a high incidence of wheel flats on the fleet.” The city would like to see an analysis of the root causes.

As for the doors, the notice says they were probably not designed properly in the first place. “Based on the performance of the doors in the first four months of service, it was evident that the design of the doors did not meet the requirements of the Project Agreement.”

(Early on, a stuck door would cripple an entire train and it took weeks to tweak the software so that drivers could disable the affected set of doors and carry on.)

Other sections of the letter mention everything from the passenger information function to the platform camera system to leaky tunnels, ice falling off station roofs to inadequately staffed winter operations. RTG, it appears, is also having problems finding the right technical staff.

The second letter also informs RTG that the city expects to have a 14th train for service by June 1. It ends with an echo of Mayor Jim Watson’s “kick in the pants” reference to the notice of default, approved by council on Monday.

“The City has not to date observed any sense of urgency from RTG to address or resolve its performance issues and the issues with the System,” it reads.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...rmance-in-notice-of-lrt-contract-failure

[zzptichka]

Originally Posted by sseguin

Memo: Notice of Default and Rectification Notice. These notices, sent to RTG by Michael Morgan (Director of Rail Construction), outline with some level of detail, the current issues and deficiencies of the Confederation Line.

https://otrainfans.ca/news/memo-notice-of-default-and-rectification-notice

Fascinating document.

[DarthVader_1961]

There are issues to resolve.. that is a fact.

Does the city also shoulder blame for going live before proper testing would have revealed some, if not all, of the defects cold be identified?

Was there a full 12 twelve days of trouble free testing?