O-Train Woes Indicate Serious New Problem
The two OC Transpo press releases in the posts below beg a number of questions:
- What is with the timing of the releases? One is at 9:57 p.m. on Monday and the other arrived at 12:43 a.m. on Tuesday;
- The timing is very rushed likely meaning OC Transpo has an emergency with the tunnel. Trains were immediately re-routed to a second track so as to avoid the affected area of the tunnel;
- What is “agile mode”? It is the job of the folks at Happy Town News to translate from foreign languages such as municipalese and engineering jargon. Ottawans are just people, not big important people with big important terms. The repair team might be in “agile mode” but it appears HTN is not;
- A very telling term this “the aging structure”. Does this tunnel need to be replaced? Does the city have the money to replace the tunnel? Is that why it gets repairs, then another problem shows up;
- If your agent were OC Transpo, he would avoid the term “abundance of caution”. That’s because OC Transpo has not used an abundance of caution in bus repairs, sent out the O-Train originally when it was obviously not ready, has had a number of train derailments and two deadly bus crashes. There has been an “abundance of” something but caution might not be the correct word;
- We’re back to using R1 replacement buses for the O-Train. Wonder why the buses continue to work but the trains don’t?
- “OC Transpo thanks customers for their patience as we work to ensure the ongoing safe operations of the O-Train.” See above on the “safe” part of the statement and there is no value in thanking customers for their patience. Their patience ran out long ago.
If anyone understands how the temporary service changes for the St. Laurent tunnel work, please drop us a line at The Bulldog. OC Transpo riders, whose abundance of patience has been exhausted, might appreciate understanding where they are going on our broken light-rail line.
One other thing. We are two years into Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s term but we still have no sign of the route cause of the LRT woes and very little signs of any kind of repair other than throwing new axles at the vehicles.
Ken Gray
For You:
OC Transpo Responds To Tunnel ‘New Information’
Train Lines 2, 4 To ‘Pause’ For Maintenance
Kitchissippi Shelter Not A Done Deal: LEIPER
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Line 1 is running as two segments. Transfer at St Laurent required.
Regular frequency on *St Laurent* to Tunneys segment. 15 headway on St Laurent to Blair segment.
E1 running as usual. OCT is monitoring and may supplement with R1 Blair -St Laurent if needed. Cyrville has LRT service only. No bus shuttle or R1 service.
The issue is ongoing as they found a St Laurent tunnel roof issue which requires immediate action. (Tunnel is city maintained.)
The inspection was part of planned follow-up from last tunnel roof issue.
Yes, when they notice part of concrete is delaminating (peeling off), it is urgent.
What Monday night’s memo didn’t say was if the inspection was completed or just initiated.
Now the question is can they get the equipment needed to remediate the problem in tonight’s previously planned maintenance shutdown in that section of Line 1.
Sometimes I wonder if the OCT GM needs corporate communication training, public relations training or HR training to hire people to do that communication.
I’m curious if briefs are better explained in French since she regularly switches back to French when questions come up at council.
Miranda. City hall doesn’t need communication training. People who work there are all good writers and excel at putting the correct “spin” on all correspondence. What city hall lacks is problem solvers. And there’s nothing wrong with switching from French to English and back again. Moi, je parle tres bien la franglais. Quand je forget le mot francais je switch back to anglais. C’est simple.
I wonder about this tunnel which is a left-over from the Transitway and dates to the mid-to-late 80’s. It would be interesting to see the documents relating to the conversion of the St. Laurent Station from Transitway to rail. What discussions were held then about the viability of the tunnel and other sections of the Station? How carefully did they even examine it? Was it kept because it was sound and could be relied on for many more years service or was it a cost-saving measure? I’m sure the price to have replaced it would have been very high and it would have involved considerable disruption to the transit system over a period of years while they built a new one.
At over thirty years old, it’s not surprising that it’s not in tiptop shape. Instead of doing repairs in dribs and drabs and, it appears, only in response to incidents, wouldn’t it make more sense to close the Station for whatever period of time is necessary, do a thorough inspection top to bottom and repair the entire thing so it can last another thirty years? If it can’t be economically rehabilitated and needs to be replaced, we need to find that out now and stop putting bandaids on a failing structure. Doing it in bits and pieces is only prolonging the agony and probably grossly inflating the cost.
Yes, it will be inconvenient but so much more ‘convenient’ than having a chunk of the tunnel falling as a train is passing underneath and killing people. A planned repair or replacement is always a lot easier to organize and carry out than one in response to a catastrophe. And it’s not like OC Transpo needs any more blows to people’s confidence in it.