City pushes to extend new radio system to police, LRT
The Dunrobin tornado might be a prime example of why the city needs to get a new radio system completely implemented for emergency responders who use the municipal communications network.
The Ottawa Police Service is the last large user group that still needs to be switched to the new radio system and unplug from a rickety legacy system. The full rollout to police is still a few months away. It’s one of two big priorities, with the city also making sure there are seamless radio communications for opening day of the Confederation Line LRT, loosely scheduled for sometime in the first quarter of 2019.
The city expected to transition nearly 6,000 users to the new Bell-supplied radio system in 2015, but the work isn’t done. The legacy system still used by police, dating back to the mid-1990s, was declared at the end of its life in 2015.
There have been setbacks over three years trying to implement a new radio system in the City of Ottawa, but Pierre Poirier, the city’s head of emergency management and security who’s overseeing the radio transition, said there have been wins in 2018.
“I’d say it’s good news,” Poirier said in an interview. “The fire transition is complete, we’re nearing completion on all of our LRT commitments, and the planning for the Ottawa Police Service transition is going well.
“We’re going to be programming the (police) radios later this month and hopefully starting the transition early in January.”
Poirier said the city will fully roll out the new radio system to police by March or April.
There are more than 4,200 radios on the new system. They’re used by several departments, like the fire department, OC Transpo and public works. More than 1,650 radios at the police service need to be transitioned from the old system to the new system.
When tornadoes tore through Ottawa in September and knocked out power in several communities, the new radio system “worked flawlessly,” Poirier said.
However, the old system still used by police had “some performance issues,” he added.
According to Poirier, the poor performance partly had to do with generators powering the radio towers. The old radio system doesn’t have a mechanism that tells the city when fuel is running low. Some of those towers ran out of fuel and the city had to refuel them, Poirier said.
The new system has a sensor and alarms to let officials know right away when they need more fuel in an emergency.
On top of the generator problem, there were areas where the quality of the radio reception on the old system was poor during the storm response.
“There were no incidents where the radio system compromised public safety, either for the responders or the public,” Poirier said.
The city is paying $5.5 million a year to Bell in a 10-year deal to supply the new radio system. Bell is responsible for making sure the legacy system is still working during the transition. The city has also spent more than $10 million on equipment for the new system.
In addition to bringing police on board with the new radios, the city has been making sure the $2.1-billion LRT line will have perfect radio connectivity.
“That’s a fairly complicated project, when you think of ensuring that you have radio communications the length of the tunnel, and that includes the concourse level, the platform levels, then all the radio communications within the cab of the train itself,” Poirier said. “That’s all coming together as we speak.”
It’s been a challenge trying to maintain radio service through a 2.5-kilometre, concrete-lined tunnel. The city has to install a “leaky cable” running through the tunnel to pick up radio signals, making sure emergency responders and transit staff can maintain communications underground. At each underground station, the city has to put in an antenna system to augment the communications, Poirier said.
It’s a major task, considering all the other LRT work that has been happening in the tunnel in preparation for the Rideau Transit Group’s project handover to the city.
“We’ve been engaged in that process for months,” Poirier said of the LRT radio work.
Asked if the radio system would have been ready for the scrubbed November LRT handover to the city, Poirier said: “We have been always been aligning ourselves with the city’s schedule.” The radio system isn’t the thing that would delay the LRT opening, he said.
The new radio system is stable after some blips out of the gate, Poirier said. After everyone is finally on the system, the city must begin decommissioning the old one, including shutting down 17 radio towers. The new radio system works on different towers.
Poirier said it’s “one of the most complex radio systems designed.” The city has achieved its goal of maintaining public safety throughout the transition, he said.