Transpo and RTM, the main contractor, acknowledged the pain of passengers to media Thursday, but also said they believe better times are coming.
Six trains running. Out of 17.
When light rail service began to fall apart Wednesday night, it wasn’t the weather’s fault. Instead, one mechanical failure after another knocked train after train out of service, reaching a record low of six working trains out of the promised 13 (and total of 17) by late Thursday morning.
And it stayed at six trains into the afternoon peak period. Citizen transit commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert said a seventh train “died” without reaching the main line. (A seventh did launch later in the afternoon.)
Transpo and RTM, the main contractor, acknowledged the pain of passengers to media Thursday, but also said they believe better times are coming.
Transpo general manager John Manconi talked repeatedly about the goal of “service, service, service.”
RTM president Peter Lauch told reporters: “We’re moving forward.”
Underlying that optimism was a messy series of failures overnight that saw passengers escorted along the tracks from three dead trains — including one through the tunnel downtown.
Here’s how the damage stacked up.
It began with a new source of trouble. The overhead power line for the electric trains is held up by a series of poles, and each pole has an arm sticking out with a cable dangling from it, like a fishing rod and fishing line. The power wire hangs from that.
East of St. Laurent, an operator noticed during the afternoon that a cable holding the power line was broken. The operator stopped. (Lauch says a component of this support system “looked like it had some pitting and some corrosion,” but the cause is still under investigation.)
With these support arms, “we’re finding that there is some corrosion on them,” especially where they stand beside sections of highway and get a lot of salty road spray, he said.
As RTM assessed that, another train became immobilized east of Tremblay, “and this was related to the earlier wire damage,” Transpo says. Off walked the passengers, in came the R1 buses to replace all train service in the east end.
Then a third train lost power at uOttawa Station at 7:20 p.m., forcing all trains to share a single track past that area and slowing service. A fourth train suffered a door problem that took it out of service at about 8:45 p.m. More delay.
Full service was finally restored with a reduced number of trains after midnight.
Thursday began with nine trains in service. (Transpo: “Vehicle availability was challenged.”) But a power issue knocked out one train before 6 a.m. and another by 6:45 a.m. That left seven.
Another train broke down just before the 11 a.m. media session; causes weren’t immediately known.
And then there were six. And none of the damage was caused by the storm.
Four of the breakdowns were the familiar “power issues.” This is centred on the inductors, the rooftop devices that take power from the overhead lines and channel it into the train. Inductors have been suffering from dirt and salt which cause arcing, and sometimes makes the circuit breakers shut down power to a train. When this happens, a train must be taken out of service for inspection.
In one case Thursday, passengers had to walk about 15 metres through the tunnel outside Rideau Station, with escorts.
Paramedics had to help one passenger evacuated from a train near Tremblay on Wednesday night when she had a panic attack.
Related
Lauch said RTM is gradually toughening up trains by putting covers on inductors to keep out dirt and salt from road spray, and so far it has performed this on 19 of the 34 cars, meaning there are enough upgrades for eight complete trains of two cars each. “Right now as we’re speaking, they are being put on six more” cars. “Another eight to 10 days and they should all be done.”
He added: “They are good vehicles.”
Transpo has responded to the shortage of trains by extending S1 and R1 bus service. The homeward-bound S1 service started at 1 p.m. and R1 buses were scheduled to run parallel to the trains all through Thursday, but Transpo said service “will be fragile.”
Wright-Gilbert said in a radio interview that the news conference was “the regular refrain from RTM” that “we’re looking into it,” but the root causes still have not been found.
“These trains are cheap (and) they are not designed for our climate,” she said. “In my experience, the cheapest option is not always the best option and anyone who orders from Amazon could tell you that that’s true.”
Catherine McKenney from Somerset ward said RTM continues “to fail to deliver anything close” to proper service.
Coun. Shawn Menard from Capital ward criticized the public-private partnership as a failure.
More to come.
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