Bad weather is bad news for Ottawa LRT trains, city told
"The vehicles appear to be more prone to these failures during wet or inclement weather."
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International rail experts hired by Rideau Transit Group are being treated to a fine example of Ottawa’s current LRT mess as the city’s contractor started another week with a serious shortage of trains for the busiest times of day.
The gurus from JBA Corp. come on board this week with news that the Alstom Citadis Spirit trains don’t like bad weather.
The city reported that several trains suddenly stopped during the snowy, wet weekend because their circuit breakers tripped.
The problems continued Monday when only nine trains operated during the busy morning and afternoon transit commutes.
Monday night, a transit user tweeted that there was no westbound service past Lyon Station.
There should be 13 trains during peak-hour service. Wait times for trains hit six minutes, two minutes longer than what people have been used to when LRT is working properly.
OC Transpo said in a release late Monday that Tuesday service would again operate with nine trains in the morning and afternoon peak periods, supplemented by special morning bus service to downtown from Tunney’s Pasture, Hurdman and Blair stations and from downtown to Tunney’s, Hurdman and Blair in the afternoon.
As many as 50 bus trips on higher-frequency routes would be cancelled in the morning peak and up to 75 in the afternoon peak.
Experts from JBA are expected to examine a dozen issues flagged by the city about LRT maintenance. The consultants have been helping the City of Ottawa’s transportation department figure out if RTG is off track with the maintenance program, and now RTG, which is a partnership of ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon and SNC-Lavalin, has hired the consultants to fix troubles related to LRT upkeep.
JBA has experience with Alstom trains and infrastructure.
Everything about RTG’s maintenance program, which is overseen by affiliate Rideau Transit Maintenance, appears to be open to scrutiny.
Someone will obviously have to look into the power problems with the trains.
John Manconi, the city’s transportation general manager, told council and transit commission members on Monday that the loss of power to the vehicle motors has to do with problems with the electrical equipment on top of the vehicles.
“The vehicles appear to be more prone to these failures during wet or inclement weather,” Manconi told members.
The root cause is under investigation.
According to Manconi’s note, safety systems monitoring the flow of electricity will cut power using a rooftop circuit breaker and the train might come to a stop. Other on board systems, like the lighting, still work when the breaker trips.
“Customers may hear a bang or see sparks where the train contacts the overhead power wires. This may be startling but does not pose a risk to the safety of passengers in the train or on the platform,” Manconi said in his email to members.
When a train loses power, a technician must investigate and reset the system. Workers remove the train for inspection and maintenance.
The reason why there’s such a shortage of trains this week is because some of the repairs require time to complete, Manconi said.
OC Transpo strategically pulled buses from routes across the city to fill a supplemental bus service along the LRT route. The transit agency published 138 bus trips on Monday that were cancelled so buses could instead help move customers in and out of downtown.
A supplemental bus service will run on streets parallel to the LRT line until at least Friday.
It seems that as soon as RTG started getting a handle on some problems, like the buggy computer systems and the malfunctioning doors, new problems started to emerge.
The list of problems grew over the weekend when some trains conked out because of the power problems.
RTG was just making progress on rounding out steel wheels that have developed flat spots. There was a backlog of maintenance — up to 13 trains at one point had flat spots on wheels — and the company couldn’t roll out the necessary number of trains to provide full service.
Over the past four weeks, RTG reported some occurrences of electrical arcing above the trains.
Then there was that train that pulled down an overhead wire near St. Laurent Station.
Track switches have been a problem, too, as RTG figures out a maintenance strategy for heavy snow and ice.
For each separate problem, RTG has assembled a task force to investigate the root causes.
During a transit commission meeting last week, Peter Lauch, chief executive of RTG’s maintenance arm, said the company has been consumed with reacting to problems rather than studying day-to-day operational issues.
RTG was the top-ranked consortia during the Stage 1 procurement, both on the technical side and financial side. The consortium’s maintenance and rehabilitation plan scored 80 per cent during the technical evaluation, leading to the group’s winning the $2.1-billion LRT construction contract. The group has a 30-year maintenance deal with the city, which is withholding monthly payments during the service problems.
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