Fix The Train

The light-rail Confederation went down on Tuesday as it has done countless times since its inception on Sept. 15, 2015.

Five years, half a decade, and this monstrosity of a money pit still doesn’t work.

Bad enough that the north-south Trillium Line is late so that thousands of Carleton University students can’t use it … again … as the school year begins. One of our city’s great institutions that really needs mass transit doesn’t have mass transit. The City of Ottawa and OC Transpo are letting down Carleton University and its good students and staff. The city is supposed to supporting our big institutions such as the Ottawa Hospital, our colleges and universities and the federal government but it’s not.

The City of Ottawa is not just letting our great institutions down, it is letting the people of Ottawa down. In most other cities, light rail has been dead easy. It is a known technology. Boeing has had trouble with its space program but at least it has the excuse that it is pushing the envelope of a developing technology. Trains? Well they’ve been around for a while.

There’s no excuse. None whatsoever. It has been five years.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe ran on a platform to fix the train. The train is not fixed. It has been two years or more since that promise. There’s no excuse. These are not start-up bugs. Those were a half-decade ago.

What is frightening is that there appears to be no plan … publicly at least … to fix the train.

There was a fix supposedly coming from train-builder Alstom but that company gave up on it. Why shouldn’t it? The Transportation Safety Board said its hub and wheel assemblies met technical specifications. Alstom has built many light-rail systems without the mountainous woes of the Confederation Line. And a company doesn’t survive long fixing the massive mistakes of others.

How does the Confederation Line, with no apparent fix, continue to run? OC Transpo keeps throwing new axles and hub assemblies at it in an extremely inefficient manner as pointed out by the TSB. Transpo employees have reported large piles of axles in train yards.

In fact, when the Confederation Line restarted after one of its many stops, it ran shortened trains because OC Transpo was unsure it could get a sufficient supply of axles and hub assemblies. Not good.

This week the train went down again during the morning rush hour. It went down when public servants were returning to work and students were going back to school. If there were a few weeks when Transpo should have wanted the system to work, it’s right now. It didn’t.

Employees, public and private, need to get to work on time. Students need to get to classes and exams. The train hurts our students and our local economy. Employers need to have their employees get to work on time. The City of Ottawa is disappointing them horribly. The City of Ottawa, rather than helping the local economy, rather than using the train to cut commuting greenhouse gases, is making both those situations worse. Good intensions, grandiose intentions, gone mad.

One wonders how many people have suffered both academically and financially from the incompetence of city hall on this issue. The city, obviously, is in over its head., How many people have lost their jobs or failed exams because the excuse that the O-Train didn’t work got as old as the dog ate my homework.

We have had enough time to know that the city, OC Transpo and the mayor can’t fix this train. Probably can’t get it completed either.

Someone or something, the province in particular, needs to put an end to this physical scar across our city, this economic lead lifesaver, this liability to our great institutions as well as this embarrassment and burden to the well-meaning people of Ottawa.

Fix the train. Get it?.

Now. Not five years from now. Not two years from now. Now. Right now.

Ken Gray

For You:

‘Experienced Staff’ Fix Crippled O-Train: THE VOTER

O-Train Down Again, Up Again

City Just Wants A Blank Cheque: PATTON

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