Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service

[rocketphish]

Council directs OC Transpo to conduct safety audit of O-Train 'spalling' issue
OC Transpo was directed to initiate the safety audit once full service is restored and to present the findings to the transit committee.

By Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Citizen
Published Feb 25, 2026 | Last updated 2 hours ago

Ottawa city council has directed OC Transpo to conduct an audit into safety concerns that resulted in 41 trains being removed from service due to “spalling” issues with the cartridge bearing assembly in the train cars’ axles.

Council passed a motion from Coun. David Hill directing OC Transpo’s chief safety officer to initiate the safety audit as soon as full train service has been restored and to present the audit’s findings to the transit committee within four months of commencing the study.

If full service is not restored by the end of September, or if OC Transpo finds it unlikely that full service will be restored by that time, staff were directed to submit a report to council and the auditor general with a completion timeline and “all known issues — spalling and otherwise — regarding the Line 1 technical complications.”

The staff report should explain “the most current information and analysis” on any technical issues, according to Hill’s motion, which was seconded by Coun. Glen Gower, chair of the city’s transit committee.

There is currently no timeline for the full restoration of Line 1 service.

The motion also requests Auditor General Nathalie Gougeon to “consider increasing the priority of the agile audit of the LRT … so that work can begin as soon as the audit by OC Transpo has been submitted to the Auditor General’s Office, should she believe further value could be added by her office in this area.”

OC Transpo was forced to take 41 train cars out of service for inspection and repairs in January after the Rideau Transit Group identified an issue with spalling in the cartridge bearing assemblies on the train’s axles.

OC Transpo interim general manager Troy Charter has explained spalling as flakes breaking away from the metal surface inside the bearing, contaminating the grease and inhibiting the bearings from rotating smoothly, which can result in further degradation and “can ultimately lead to a failure.”

<more>

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/oc-tr...train-spalling

[dougvdh]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

4000km is wayyyy more than in reality.

Any given train is only running up to around 40 trips end to end every day. On a 12.5km line that's only 500km a day.

And there's 21 trains running right now, so that's over 4000km of use a day. So to keep up with maintenance, you need to change a full set train's worth of bearing every 25 days on average. (unless they can resolve the issues and get the mileage before failure up).

[J.OT13]

Progress on the Blair elevator replacement.

[rocketphish]

OC Transpo acknowledges slow going in O-Train axle repairs
There are still just 21 train cars available for Line 1 service, while 38 remain out of service for inspection and repairs. Those numbers have remained unchanged for several weeks.

By Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Citizen
Published Feb 27, 2026 | Last updated 6 hours ago

OC Transpo acknowledged the painstakingly slow progress in returning its O-Train fleet to full service with numbers of available trains that were largely unchanged from previous weekly updates.

The transit authority removed 41 train cars from service on Jan. 21 after the Rideau Transit Group identified “spalling” issues with the cartridge bearing assembly in the train cars’ axles.

At that time, OC Transpo said it had only 18 train cars available. In an update on Feb. 27, OC Transpo said it had 21 train cars available and 38 remained out of service for inspection and repairs.

Those numbers have remained unchanged for several weeks, according to updates shared in weekly memos to council.

O-Train Line 1 service continues to operate with trains every three to four minutes during peak periods, while Lines 2 and 4 are not affected by the spalling issue.

OC Transpo interim general manager Troy Charter has explained spalling as flakes breaking away from the metal surface inside the bearing, which can result in further degradation and “can ultimately lead to a failure.”

On Friday, Charter once again thanked frustrated customers for their patience as OC Transpo, Rideau Transit Group and train manufacturer Alstom continued to repair bearings on train cars that had exceeded 100,000 kilometres.

“The focus remains on ensuring that the proposed measures that need to be put in place ensure the ongoing safety and reliability of the system,” Charter said. “The work is complex and, unfortunately, cannot be rushed.”

Charter said OC Transpo had also been making “incremental” progress with its rapidly aging bus fleet.

Two more zero-emission electric hybrid buses have joined the fleet, which now includes 55 electric buses.

Charter said OC Transpo was continuing to work through a maintenance backlog with diesel buses that had exceeded their 15-year useful lifespans.

“We need to continue with our recruitment of mechanics and we need to onboard the zero-emission electric buses so that we can retire some of the oldest buses in our fleet that are unreliable. When we have issues, they tend to be out (for maintenance) for longer periods of time,” Charter said.

“So, as we onboard more buses, as we bring on more mechanics, we will see incremental improvements in our bus service. And then, when we get into better weather, it’s easier to manage a fleet of vehicles with the better weather.”

OC Transpo continues to fall short of reliability targets with its bus fleet with three per cent of trips that were not delivered last week. That was an improvement from the six per cent of trips that were cancelled the previous week.

OC Transpo had an average of 492 buses available every weekday, which was short of the required 500 buses to meet service demands.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/oc-tr...o-train-update

[Richard Eade]

As more, and more, axles are being looked at, after traveling 100,000 kilometres, RTM and OC Transpo will start to get a better idea of how prevalent the problem is. Right now, I don’t think that they are getting enough done, fast enough to know if there are, on average, only one in 30, for example, bearing races exhibit any spalling (or fretting, for that matter). To me, that is one of the biggest draw-backs of such a slow process. They just don’t have an adequate sample size yet – and won’t for a long while.

All that said, the pervasiveness of spalling is something that needs to be known – and that statistic will emerge as more axles are inspected/replaced – but, perhaps an even more important thing to know is the rate of decay that the bearings undergo.

Picking random numbers here, but, if 80% of bearings show spalling at 100,000 kilometres, that is one thing. Not a good thing, but one thing. If the rate at which the bearings spall is quite slow, those bearings, despite showing wear at 100,000 km, might show little increased wear by the time they travel 250,000 km. If so, then it might not be much of a safety risk to stretch the replacement interval to 200,000 km, or more.

By forcing all the bearings to be changed at 100,000 km, they lose the information about what happens after that point. This will make it very difficult to provide valid safety information to extend the allowable travel distance for bearings.

In fairness, I don’t know why the 100,000 km limit was chosen. It might be that by that point bearings are already showing severe degradation. Meaning that 100,000 km may already be the upper limit. I don’t suspect that we will ever know the whole story.

PS Why does RTM seem to be doing the tear-down and inspection of every bearing themself? Why do they not have a subcontractor who assembles complete axles that can be swapped into the bogies without having to have RTM mechanics open the bearing cartridges to inspect them? Yup, it might be a bit more expensive, but right now, there is a huge cost to having mechanics work over-time to do both inspection and replacement.

[ponyboycurtis]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

As more, and more, axles are being looked at, after traveling 100,000 kilometres, RTM and OC Transpo will start to get a better idea of how prevalent the problem is. Right now, I don’t think that they are getting enough done, fast enough to know if there are, on average, only one in 30, for example, bearing races exhibit any spalling (or fretting, for that matter). To me, that is one of the biggest draw-backs of such a slow process. They just don’t have an adequate sample size yet – and won’t for a long while.

All that said, the pervasiveness of spalling is something that needs to be known – and that statistic will emerge as more axles are inspected/replaced – but, perhaps an even more important thing to know is the rate of decay that the bearings undergo.

Picking random numbers here, but, if 80% of bearings show spalling at 100,000 kilometres, that is one thing. Not a good thing, but one thing. If the rate at which the bearings spall is quite slow, those bearings, despite showing wear at 100,000 km, might show little increased wear by the time they travel 250,000 km. If so, then it might not be much of a safety risk to stretch the replacement interval to 200,000 km, or more.

By forcing all the bearings to be changed at 100,000 km, they lose the information about what happens after that point. This will make it very difficult to provide valid safety information to extend the allowable travel distance for bearings.

In fairness, I don’t know why the 100,000 km limit was chosen. It might be that by that point bearings are already showing severe degradation. Meaning that 100,000 km may already be the upper limit. I don’t suspect that we will ever know the whole story.

PS Why does RTM seem to be doing the tear-down and inspection of every bearing themself? Why do they not have a subcontractor who assembles complete axles that can be swapped into the bogies without having to have RTM mechanics open the bearing cartridges to inspect them? Yup, it might be a bit more expensive, but right now, there is a huge cost to having mechanics work over-time to do both inspection and replacement.

Good points. They should have one train that you just need to sign a waiver to board haha.

I realize this shouldn't ever really be a consideration but.. regarding subcontracting, burnout and morale is a thing. If you keep feeding your guys endless shit they aren't going to enjoy it. I quit a decent gig I had once because I just got sick of the method and backwardness. I don't care what it paid.

I can't say what are the more desirable tasks in the maintenance yard but being under constant pressure for a seemingly unsolvable problem while half the city hates you does is not where I would want my boys to be for extended lengths of time. Yeah.. a job is a job. Sure.

On the other hand. Having a consistent group of people examine the same issues is a good continuity to have. We just need to have an end in sight eventually.

[Richard Eade]

Well, how about this: Grab 10 LRVs that are near, or just over, the 100,000 km limit, and examine and reassemble the bearings – leaving them as they are. Then run those 10 LRVs on the UN-OPENED East extension (or truck them to the west extension) for another 100,000 km, or so, to determine what happens if they were to extend the 100,000 km limit.

Yes, I know that this takes manpower away from getting those LRVs back into the fleet. But running trains with bad bearings is the only way to truly know if the 100,000 km limit can be lengthened. Theoretical calculations are not good enough – since theoretical calculations previously declared the bearings suitable for 1,200,000 km.

So they can either be locked into changing bearing cartridges every 100,000 km, or they can test them for longer distances. Alstom has repeatedly said that the level of spalling observed is not a safety concern. They need to run trains with those bearings to verify that.

[AuxTown]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Well, how about this: Grab 10 LRVs that are near, or just over, the 100,000 km limit, and examine and reassemble the bearings – leaving them as they are. Then run those 10 LRVs on the UN-OPENED East extension (or truck them to the west extension) for another 100,000 km, or so, to determine what happens if they were to extend the 100,000 km limit.

Yes, I know that this takes manpower away from getting those LRVs back into the fleet. But running trains with bad bearings is the only way to truly know if the 100,000 km limit can be lengthened. Theoretical calculations are not good enough – since theoretical calculations previously declared the bearings suitable for 1,200,000 km.

So they can either be locked into changing bearing cartridges every 100,000 km, or they can test them for longer distances. Alstom has repeatedly said that the level of spalling observed is not a safety concern. They need to run trains with those bearings to verify that.

I think the problem is that you can't take thousands of passengers up and down in sub-par vehicles based on the data you get from a sample test of 10. The recommendations for 100000km is based on long-term data from the manufacturer and likely tens millions of km of testing and day to day use. This whole thing is a gong show but I think they need to invest whatever it takes to get up to speed ASAP. Every day we run a skeleton system the city loses the faith of people that they can deliver anything practical. It's going to take an entire generation to repair the lost trust they have earned at this point.

[mossvalley11]

One of the issues currently is that the 100,000 KM limit was ordered by the City and their consultant (TRA). Alstom via RTM are of the opinion that the issue can be detected via non destructive means and that bearing cartridges above 100,000 KM can still be safe. Due to how the contracts are setup, RTM is really just the middleman, with Alstom doing the actual maintenance of the trains. As it is a P3, OC and the City don't have any contacts with Alstom, they have one with RTM, which then contracted out the train maintenance to Alstom. This makes everything even more confusing and lengthy to work with, as the only thing the city can do is attempt to withhold payments to RTM, they can't order Alstom around.

[Kitchissippi]

Remember this bit of news 12 years ago? Ottawa LRT named P3 deal of the Year