LRT racks up a breakdown record

Only six trains available as wave of failures strikes on miserable day

Six trains running. Out of 17.

Ottawa’s light rail service hit a new low Thursday after a series of mechanical failures knocked train after train out of commission, leaving passengers with a Sophie’s choice between a debilitated LRT commute or reliance on bus travel during a major winter storm.

A quick refresh: the Confederation Line fleet consists of 17 trains. OC Transpo must run 13 to maintain its peak service timing (a train every five minutes or less). From late Thursday morning into the afternoon rush, only six were servicing 13 stations in two directions over 12.5 kilometres, a rock bottom for the light rail system since opening last September.

With such a diminished level of service on the tracks, OC Transpo proactively made available the R1 replacement bus service that runs the length of the Confederation Line, stopping at the various LRT stations, as well as direct S1 bus service between downtown and popular commuter stations Blair, Hurdman and Tunney’s Pasture.

The choice was a no-brainer for public servant Sarah Campeau, who braved blowing snow and biting wind to catch a S1 bus on Albert Street Thursday afternoon. “Whenever they are running, I take them,” she said. “It’s a better service, it shows up, it doesn’t smell.” (A trip down into Parliament Station requires putting up with a pungent stench from an unknown source, reminiscent of sewage.)

Campeau posed some questions to decision-makers responsible for the Confederation Line: “What’s your long-term plan?”

“How are you going to fix the issues?”

The preceding 24 hours had seen quite a list of them — new as well as now-familiar problems — that resulted in stalled trains, passenger evacuations and talk of pulling the plug on the 30-year contractual relationship with system custodian Rideau Transit Maintenance. Here’s how the damage stacked up.

It began Wednesday night 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. Rideau Transit Maintenance chief executive Peter Lauch said a component of this support system “looked like it had some pitting and some corrosion,” but the cause was still under investigation.

Passengers were escorted off a stopped train onto waiting buses, and the R1 service launched to move people between Hurdman and Blair stations while RTM worked to repair the problem.

It immobilized another train east of Tremblay, where paramedics had to help one passenger evacuate after she had a panic attack. 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. The cause was different in this case — an arcing issue, according to city transportation boss John Manconi.

A fourth train suffered a door problem that took it out of service at about 8:45 p.m. 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. At one point, passengers had to be escorted on foot through the tunnel by Rideau Station, and everyone was told to expect longer travel times.

Public servant Pete Gaudaur was among the transit users whose commute was fouled-up by the morning breakdowns. He spent 40 minutes waiting to catch a westbound train at Hurdman Station — at one point, waiting passengers were told all service would run out of the eastbound platform, only to later watch a westbound train roll through the platform they’d abandoned.

“There were a lot of upset people this morning,” Gaudaur said. And it only got worse.

Another train broke down just before an 11 a.m. OC Transpo/RTM news conference; causes weren’t immediately known. That left a total of six trains running (a seventh did launch later in the afternoon.) And apparently, 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 that cause arcing, and sometimes make the circuit breakers shut down power to a train. When this happens, a train must be taken out of service for inspection.

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, he said. “Another eight to 10 days and they should all be done.”

The thing is, RTM already claimed this had been completed. At least that’s what Coun. Allan Hubley, chair of the city’s transit commission, said RTM told him. It’s one example of the consortium’s failure to perform as it ought to, in Hubley’s eyes.

“The system itself, I’m not as concerned with. What I’m really concerned with is our service provider,” he said in a Thursday interview. “I think it’s time that we have that conversation with our legal people to say, what are the off-ramps of this contract? Are there ways for us to get out of this, because ... we’re six months into it, and they haven’t performed properly one month of all six.”