Network glitch impacts signal system on Metro LRT line during commute

The Metro LRT line runs along flat land, but it continues to face an uphill battle.

The line encountered a network issue in the Thales signalling system on Friday from 8:30 a.m. to noon. Craig McKeown, Edmonton Transit’s director of engineering and maintenance, said the line faced a similar issue in 2014. The city turned off a network switch to temporarily fix the issue.

“There was problems with the trains communicating and understanding their positioning,” said McKeown. “Trains were put into a manual mode, moved to the stations, passengers were disembarked and service was replaced with buses.”

Thales is investigating the cause of the problem to confirm exactly what happened. McKeown said the problems were strictly a network issue and were not caused by cold temperatures.

“Thales and ETS teams worked together to quickly re-establish service as soon as possible following a network issue that interrupted service this morning. While the system reacted safely, we are working together with ETS to determine the cause of this interruption,” Thales spokeswoman Cara Salci said in an email.

Thales won the bid to build the new signalling system through a tender process in 2011. Work on the system was originally expected to be completed in 2013 but has faced years of delay. The city issued a notice of default against Thales last May, giving the company until Dec. 4, 2018 to finish working out any remaining issues.

“We understand the impact it has on commuters, not just those taking the LRT but those driving and the impact it has on traffic. so we understand and share their frustration,” McKeown said when asked if he had a message for commuters after Friday’s issues.

McKeown said the city is currently exploring alternative systems that it could use to replace the Thales system if it continues to remain unreliable.

“When there’s unplanned outages like this and when there’s problems, this speaks to the unreliability of the system that we’re seeing so far,” said McKeown.

When asked if Thales has any concerns with the system’s reliability, Salci said the signalling system has been performing well during the city’s testing.

The City of Edmonton tested Thales Canada’s signalling system that runs the Metro Line twice in January. The entire LRT system is scheduled to be down Sunday for further testing. McKeown said they will continue to test the line through to March, averaging one and a half days of service outages each month.

McKeown said this weekend’s testing will run as scheduled. During testing, trains will still be running, but passengers won’t be able to board.