LRT Derailment: 3 Years Later, No Root Cause
This is a good piece of information from CTV News Ottawa anchor Graham Richardson.
This by way of X:
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For Ottawa City Hall, that’s moving at the speed of light. It’s only been two and a half years. Surely you weren’t expecting to see a report any earlier – especially since it takes a lot of time to hold a pig still long enough to get some lipstick onto it. The time here was not to do the investigation or write up the results. Oh no! The need for this length of time is to produce a report that can show some quasi-believable story about the near disaster without placing any of the blame on the guilty parties and without any responsibility being taken by anyone. Plus, of course, they hold out hope that, with the passage of time, some other and bigger mess will come along that will push a small thing like a derailment to the back burner.
It must be getting harder and harder to manage the window-dressing department down at OC Transpo what with all the negative events and the endless search for root causes. I would hazard a guess that the instructions to those who would produce such a report is to appear to look for root causes but not to disturb the soil around the roots too much. Certainly don’t bring in the backhoe that might expose the whole underground structure and potentially show the rot at the base of it all.
Do a small comparison between an LRT derailment and an aircraft lost at sea.. For the LRT, all the parts and information is still accessible and easily found and most of the people who witnessed the event are still here, but for an aircraft first one has to actually FIND the bits and pieces or at least however much can be found, supported by the black box recorder and generally there are no witnesses.
Aircraft loss is of a greater magnitude in loss of life and equipment but also MUCH more difficult to find and understand the cause, yet almost ALL are solved within a year or two.
LRT defining the “ROOT CAUSE” of a mishap, well after THREE years maybe next year or the next year or? Perhaps the root cause has been found but some agent wishes it kept secret?
Oft times what is not said is far more instructive than what is said. In this instance, the lack of meaningful questions from committee members speaks volumes. Questions such as:
>after two and a half years, why have you not concluded what the root cause is;
> what further analysis do you plan on completing to draw a conclusion; and
> when can we expect a conclusion?
Instead, we get the equivalent of “Thank you for your report. Next item on the agenda.”
What this tells us is that the committee does not want the public to know what caused the LRT derailment. It tells us that council as a whole has agreed that talking about the LRT is out of bounds.
Look, is that a robin? Spring must be here!
Ron;
If the city can’t find a root cause of the derailment after three years, they are either woefully incompetent (and how LRT has gone, that’s possible) or they don’t want us to know.
As an information guy, I’m going with they don’t want us to know.
They’re hoping this issue just goes away. Thank goodness for Graham Richardson’s comment on X.
cheers
kgray
ch