Ottawa Transit Developments

[mdrejhon]

Somebody said that a person pushed the door button after the doors had closed. This caused the doors to re-open and go into fault. The problem here is that this happened at Bayview Station where the interconnection is with Line 2. On Line 2, you have to push the button to open the doors. If the story is true, this is not abuse by a user but a technical problem with the door design.

I'm a software developer so...

Faulty firmware? The software in the door crashed when you tried to reopen after already closed, and a flag is now set incorrectly...

(If so, then Alstom, get at it... STAT! The #NOLRT pitchforks are starting to line up in Toronto and Hamilton)

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The Confederation Line has been plagued with delays during its first week of full service, much to the dismay of commuters and onlookers alike. We discuss the reasons for the delays, as well as our thoughts on how to turn things around in this video!

Fortunately the public has.a short attention span and memory. Nobody talks about Montreal's Azures less than stellar launch, and even the whole TTC streetcar debacle is starting to fade into the past. I'm not too concerned about what this means for the future of LRT as long as things stabilize within the next few weeks. Is we're still talking about the problem plagued Otrain system next spring then things will be looking bad for LRT in Canada

My prediction is that next week it will run smoother, but I expect a few more problems week arise then settle down.

I also expect OC Transpo to totally botch the first major snowstorm, and headlines will roll again about the winter worthiness of the trains, then I expect that to settle down as things go on

 

[robmausser]

I would bet money that the scramble you see at UWaterloo is not close to what you see at UOttawa, given the size of the trains involved, numbers of students and the short dwell time. These faults are only happening at busy core stops and the interchanges. No faults yet at St-Laurent, Cyrville, Tremblay or Pimisi.

Yes, the ION LRT has barely enough ridership to justify an LRT over BRT, and the O Train is almost too busy for LRT, its a metro line basically.

They operate at the opposite extremes of LRT usage type.

So its apples and oranges.

 

[gweed123]

When are we building line 3?

My bet is that "Line 3" will be the name given to the Baseline branch of the Confederation Line. Line 1 will run from Moodie to Trim, and Line 3 will run from Baseline to Blair or Hurdman.

 

[gweed123]

The east end load is way more distributed between Blair, St Laurent and Hurdman.

The west end load means 99% of that traffic boards at Tunney's, and the stupid decision to use side rather than a centre platform even though it's a temporary terminus means the platforms are always full to the brim, since missing a train means you have to wait twice as long because the alternate train will arrive and depart from the other platform. Thus every single train leaving Tunney's is crush loaded, which exacerbates the problem that you only need to breathe heavily it seems on the doors when they are closing to knock them out of alignment.

They should not have forced west end commuters to switch to the train at the edge of downtown and simply continued west end buses.

That would have been a reasonable solution. Have the buses go down Slater, then turn onto Metcalfe and head back west. Of course, you would then get the inevitable "west enders get to keep their direct-to-downtown ride while east enders are forced to transfer".

You're absolutely right about Tunney's though. A centre platform design would have made a lot more sense, and dumping that many people at a single station is a recipe for disaster.

Off the top of my head, the only station in Ontario that may see that many bus to train transfers at a single station is Finch, and I think Tunney's is probably higher during peak hour.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

My bet is that "Line 3" will be the name given to the Baseline branch of the Confederation Line. Line 1 will run from Moodie to Trim, and Line 3 will run from Baseline to Blair or Hurdman.

Or it might be the airport branch of Line 2. Given the fact they went to the trouble of giving numbers, and reserving the numbers 3 and 4 (buses start at 5) I think they'll number the branches. It probably means they will be interlined I'm the tunnel.

I know some people don't think they'd use a number for branches, but the whole point of numbering was for wayfinding, and it's much easier and faster to remember "1 to baseline, 3 to Moodie", rather than looking at the terminus station name of each trains sign like in Vancouver.

 

[gweed123]

Or it might be the airport branch of Line 2. Given the fact they went to the trouble of giving numbers, and reserving the numbers 3 and 4 (buses start at 5) I think they'll number the branches. It probably means they will be interlined I'm the tunnel.

For navigation's sake, I'd hope they would use 'odd numbers = E-W, even numbers = N-S', but yes I agree.

You can tell just based on how they designed the station and wayfinding signage that they've been designed to be modified for additional lines. The red bar above each Confederation Line station sign doesn't go the whole way across, and the very fact that they have a coloured bar there at all leads me to believe there will be a time when that coloured bar is an important wayfinding feature.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

For navigation's sake, I'd hope they would use 'odd numbers = E-W, even numbers = N-S', but yes I agree.

You can tell just based on how they designed the station and wayfinding signage that they've been designed to be modified for additional lines. The red bar above each Confederation Line station sign doesn't go the whole way across, and the very fact that they have a coloured bar there at all leads me to believe there will be a time when that coloured bar is an important wayfinding feature.

Trillium line stations actually have a green bar on their signs

 

[KevinT]

I would bet money that the scramble you see at UWaterloo is not close to what you see at UOttawa, given the size of the trains involved, numbers of students and the short dwell time. These faults are only happening at busy core stops and the interchanges. No faults yet at St-Laurent, Cyrville, Tremblay or Pimisi.

The LRV operators here decide when to disable the doors based on monitoring their in-cab video feeds. I believe in Ottawa so far it's been a time limit set in the automation.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The LRV operators here decide when to close the doors based on monitoring their in-cab video feeds. I believe in Ottawa it's been a hard time limit set by the automation.

It is, which is why this only happens between 7:30 and 8:30, and not today before a long weekend. That period is when trains are so full the doors start closing before people can get off and on.

Fixing the timing will go a long way, but still the doors should be more durable then they have been.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

One thing that will probably not change for me now is that checking Twitter has become part of my morning routine. If it's exploding, I change my commute to take the slower number 6 bus all the way up Bank Street from Billings Bridge. At least until I'm totally sure that they have their act together. It's actually a silver lining, before you had no idea where OC Transpo would fail you because each bus was it's own special slice of hell. Now i clearly know what to avoid.

The commute home though it's always fine, and much faster with the train.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Fortunately the public has.a short attention span and memory. Nobody talks about Montreal's Azures less than stellar launch, and even the whole TTC streetcar debacle is starting to fade into the past. I'm not too concerned about what this means for the future of LRT as long as things stabilize within the next few weeks. Is we're still talking about the problem plagued Otrain system next spring then things will be looking bad for LRT in Canada

My prediction is that next week it will run smoother, but I expect a few more problems week arise then settle down.

I also expect OC Transpo to totally botch the first major snowstorm, and headlines will roll again about the winter worthiness of the trains, then I expect that to settle down as things go on

But honestly, what difference will any change in heart do? The crosstown, the Confederation Line and maybe the Hurontario LRT are the only lines that might justify higher-order transit (whether it is a subway, high platform light rail, or simply the addition of larger vehicles), and they're all either under construction, complete, or have the rolling stock on order.

Personally, I don't ever recall 4 straight days of catastrophic failures for the Azurs or Flexity Outlooks. Sure, there are vehicle problems, but a lot of this stems from the fact that OC Transpo rushed this whole process; they didn't do proper ridership analyses, and they clearly didn't consider passenger behavior. Anyone with half a brain should know that running a brand new line at 90% capacity (while mainly factoring in transfer ridership) is going to be a recipe for disaster during its first weeks, especially with an agency as inexperienced as OC Transpo.

The public is still very much pissed at Bombardier, they just don't complain unless something wrong happens because they don't want to look like assholes.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

But honestly, what difference will any change in heart do? The crosstown, the Confederation Line and maybe the Hurontario LRT are the only lines that might justify higher-order transit (whether it is a subway, high platform light rail, or simply the addition of larger vehicles), and they're all either under construction, complete, or have the rolling stock on order.

Personally, I don't ever recall 4 straight days of catastrophic failures for the Azurs or Flexity Outlooks. Sure, there are vehicle problems, but a lot of this stems from the fact that OC Transpo rushed this whole process; they didn't do proper ridership analyses, and they clearly didn't consider passenger behavior. Anyone with half a brain should know that running a brand new line at 90% capacity (while mainly factoring in transfer ridership) is going to be a recipe for disaster during its first weeks, especially with an agency as inexperienced as OC Transpo.

The public is still very much pissed at Bombardier, they just don't complain unless something wrong happens because they don't want to look like assholes.

It's only 3 straight days of catastrophic LRT failures

Today and Monday was only catastrophic bus failures, which is the OC Transpo we all know and love here in Ottawa

Also they started with just enough trains for load because OC Transpo always looked at this as a money saving exercise, which goes away if you allow slack in the system

There original intention was to run singles outside of peak periods, by design we were supposed to be standing room only at all times of day. It turns out coupling and uncoupling is more tricky then they thought, so now the trains are in semi permanent pairs.

 

[mdrejhon]

Fortunately the public has.a short attention span and memory. Nobody talks about Montreal's Azures less than stellar launch, and even the whole TTC streetcar debacle is starting to fade into the past. I'm not too concerned about what this means for the future of LRT as long as things stabilize within the next few weeks. Is we're still talking about the problem plagued Otrain system next spring then things will be looking bad for LRT in Canada

My prediction is that next week it will run smoother, but I expect a few more problems week arise then settle down.

I also expect OC Transpo to totally botch the first major snowstorm, and headlines will roll again about the winter worthiness of the trains, then I expect that to settle down as things go on

We have a major LRT construction contract vote in Spring 2020. Hopefully the Ottawa LRT doesn't have too many problems in the winter.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

We have a major LRT construction contract vote in Spring 2020. Hopefully the Ottawa LRT doesn't have too many problems in the winter.

Oh, in that case you're pretty much screwed . Horrible winter transit stories are an OC Transpo speciality.