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TTC: Other Items (catch all)

Electrify said:
Seeing as transit is considered an essential service, could subway riders file a class action suit for failure to deliver such service?

Offering free rides for the rest of the day would be a good customer service move, and may even hold off such action.
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I doubt being declared an "Essential Service" under a very specific legal framework for government administration and labour relations purposes bridges to being an "essential service" that the city is obligated to provide. Even if it did, a court would accept that a 100% service standard cannot be obtained or expected. It's quite unfortunate they used such a confusing term as it really warps people understanding of what it's about and allows it to be politicized.
 
Electrify said:
Seeing as transit is considered an essential service, could subway riders file a class action suit for failure to deliver such service?

Offering free rides for the rest of the day would be a good customer service move, and may even hold off such action.
Click to expand...

Free rides for the rest of the day would be a great goodwill gesture. I'm not sure a class action suit would achieve much - the TTC could probably say that the shutdown was due to circumstances beyond its control.
 
the lemur said:
Anything to suggest it was from a lightning strike during last night's thunderstorm?

Also, what kind of UPS drains its battery when it fails?
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I don't know if the thunderstorm was the cause of the power outage, but the issue was not specifically the UPS - but rather the fact it failed to switch back to "wall power" when the outside power came back on. UPS's have a finite amount of time that they can run for before their batteries run out, and that is what happened here.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
I don't know if the thunderstorm was the cause of the power outage, but the issue was not specifically the UPS - but rather the fact it failed to switch back to "wall power" when the outside power came back on. UPS's have a finite amount of time that they can run for before their batteries run out, and that is what happened here.
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Batteries? For an installation of that size, I'd have thought that there'd have been a pair of generators - with the battery only there to cover the period until the generator is up and running.
 
nfitz said:
Batteries? For an installation of that size, I'd have thought that there'd have been a pair of generators - with the battery only there to cover the period until the generator is up and running.
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They have generators for the buildings, but smaller installations for individual devices and systems. And even generators can be problematic, as they take a second or two before the power can come online, whereas batteries are virtually instantaneous.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
DSC said:
They would probably also fire the operator!
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You're "allowed" to run 3 reds before any real disciplinary action (time off work) and then it's another 2 before you're kicked out of subway but still have a job as a bus/streetcar operator or station collector. If you are a new hire and still on the 10 month probation period then you are let go all together. Any red light that is run comes off 12 months later as well.
 
smallspy said:
I don't know if the thunderstorm was the cause of the power outage, but the issue was not specifically the UPS - but rather the fact it failed to switch back to "wall power" when the outside power came back on.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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Would the failure to switch back be attributable to the age or maintenance level of the UPS? A manufacturing defect? Would they have to test the UPS on a regular basis?
 
I didn't hear Byford this morning but what I suspect was this:

Some pieces of equipment have only one AC-DC power supply. We have some stuff like this. If you connect them to a UPS and the UPS goes down, it's as down as if the mains supply itself was turned off.

This can be avoided by a UPS transfer switch. This allows you to connect either 1 UPS and the mains, or two UPS which then doubles your uptime during a power failure. The downside of that is that the transfer switch becomes the point of failure. The real issue was that it looks the primary radio system and backup system were connected to the same transfer switch. In so far as possible, you want a backup to share the least possible number of dependencies with the primary. In the alternative, the backup system failed for a different reason when it was requested to step into the breach.
 
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the lemur said:
Would the failure to switch back be attributable to the age or maintenance level of the UPS? A manufacturing defect? Would they have to test the UPS on a regular basis?
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UPS equipment self tests on a regular basis but I can tell you that we have had unpredicted failures even with self-testing. The best protection is two fully redundant power paths to the device, such as servers with 2 power supply units - but with some gizmos it's not possible to specify that as an option. Even then, one bad PSU can make life difficult irrespective of the quality of input power - and the latest servers we received have firmware upgrades for the PSUs :eek:
 
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