Ottawa's LRT - Still a Mess

Back in June 2019, I worked out how OCTranspo and the City of Ottawa could completely screw up the roll out of the new LRT.  I tend to assume that if there's a way to screw up public transit, OC Transpo will do or has done it.  If there are multiple ways to screw up, OCTranspo will start with the most disruptive way first.  Murphy could learn from OCTranspo.  Go read my original post then come back, or open it in a new tab so you can compare.

1) The 12 days of testing post-handover.  OCTranspo did not have twelve consecutive days of testing.  There was a three day break during the testing around day 8 or day 9, then testing continued instead of restarting from Day 1.  That got the service running in a soft open, where buses ran regular routes alongside the train.  The true opening came at the start of October, where buses no longer ran downtown.

2) Route changes and face planting.  The soft open did well.  Some people tried the LRT, others remained on the buses to see what happened.  The LRT was busy but not crush levels.  No major problems during the soft open.  Once the LRT became the only way to get downtown during rush, problems began.  Overcrowding on the LRT, on the platforms, and on the buses.  Delays came up.  The trains' doors often got stuck open, with passengers being blamed for them being held open.  Definite face planting occurred.  In November, there was an eleven day stretch where over 11 hours of delays happened.  On a system where a five minute delay causes everything to break, having trains out of service threw the entire kit and kaboodle into useless disarray.

3) Winter.  Early November is when winter looms.  End of November, winter has started.  The cold weather caused issues for the tracks.  Switches froze.  Ottawa did not get the weeks of -35 degree Celcius we had the previous two winters.  What we did get is a mix of snow, freezing rain, and rain, with fluctuating temperatures.  One train managed to not only take itself out but also take out the wires above because no one thought to clear the dirt and grime that built up on the train roofs.  At one point, OCTranspo was down to six trains running out of a theoretical 15 (in practice, 13, with two trains on standby, and two other trains that should be there somewhere in the ether), requiring buses to be run downtown.  Again, this is a train that travels mostly outside, and Ottawa gets extreme seasons.

Winter also revealed another problem - the outdoor platforms provide no protection from the elements.  The platforms are great for a spring day, 15 degrees Celsius, partly cloudy with a light wind.  They're not good for -20 degrees Celcius with wind gusts.  Except where there's a bridge over the platform - see Tremblay and Cyrville Stations - people will get rained and snowed on.  There's no shelter, leaving questions about whether the designer had even bothered to check weather conditions in Ottawa.

Bus service has gotten worse.  No one at OCTranspo or the city worked out the math of having 600 passengers every four minutes arriving at stations.  To clear space for the next trainload, and the LRT was running at crush capacity at the beginning, there has to be a way to clear out 600 passengers by bus.  Problem is, OCTranspo cut back on drivers and buses before realizing that there's not enough of either to handle the loads.  New drivers are being hired and trained, but there's not enough buses.  Cancellations and no shows are up from before the LRT opened.

Because drivers are being pulled in to work rush hours, they're too tired to work on the weekends.  Judy Trinh tracked the cancellations, both announced and not, and found that there is a sharp increase.  One Saturday saw 70 announced cancellations and over 210 cancellations total.  Reliability is non-existent.

Austerity costs.  People have lost time and even jobs because OCTranspo cannot get people where they need to go.  I believe I'm allowed a "I told you so!" here.

Really, OCTranspo passengers have told them so.

Stage 2 is starting.  The problems from Stage 1 haven't been fixed yet.  Stage 2 will continue to use the too small, too exposed platforms that were built for Stage 1.  There's no attempt to fix things.  The expansion may be needed, but it needs to be done right, not on the cheap, not using what we know is broken.  But things already look bad, with the roaming SNC-Lavelin scandal striking again, with the company failing the technical portion of the bid but still winning because prices had a higher weight.  Austerity costs, and going cheap means getting cheap and having to pay far more in the long run.

Over at Psycho Drive-In, hiatus week to get ahead on potential reviews.

Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, creativity in a pandemic.