LRT: An Abundance Of Caution … Or Something Else

The failure, yet again, of our $2.2-billion light-rail line has no end of abundances, none of which is an “abundance of caution” as Happy Town News and OC Transpo head Renee Amilcar put it.

There was an abundance of fear. You don’t suddenly close the city’s main transit line at rush-hour over an abundance of caution. You do it because you have an apprehended catastrophic failure. If you read the Transportation Safety Board report on Confederation Line derailments, you will see the word “catastrophic” a few times. This isn’t something you want to read in a safety report or much anywhere else, for that matter. The TSB said there were safety issues with the line. The city answer was to lower speeds (it’s embarrassing watching the trains go by) and inspect the trains at ridiculous high levels of labour. And even with that, the bearings that the TSB said would fail … failed. It’s in the city’s report … “it was determined that the bearing play was over the threshold at which it could stay in operation.” In other words, as the TSB would put it, it was on the cusp of catastrophic failure. As in derailment. As in possibly killing or maiming or traumatizing riders. So Transpo closed the line out of an abundance of fear.

LIGHT RAIL: Tax Money Is Your Money. Not The City’s Money

An abundance of horse doodle. “The safety of our customers and staff is our number one priority.” No. Not at all. Tell that to the people who survived the two horrible deadly OC Transpo bus crashes. Who saw limbs severed (perhaps their own limbs). Who saw bodies thrown out the vehicles. Who saw people screaming in pain. Who were traumatized by hideous events. You could try talking to the dead people but they aren’t answering. And some of the dead are luckier than the people who lived. Then there are the repeated derailments (you know … that started with the “normal derailments” in the maintenance yards). And then there was the derailment where the train was off the tracks for a distance of 4.5 football fields and crossed a bridge under which there was heavy traffic. Safety? No.

An abundance of incompetence. This train doesn’t work. Get it? It doesn’t work. Can you hear this? We got into this spot because the city, which doesn’t know squat of about building light rail, kept coming up with changes to the vehicles. Alstom cars work in Europe. Why don’t they work here? Because people who didn’t know what they are doing at the city started to make changes. Like in the route. Moving it to the place where the tunnel collapsed. Sandy Hill. That means sand and an incline. What could go wrong?

An abundance of politics. The city could not afford to close the main line because reputations, political and otherwise, were on the line. Economics was on the line … closing the Confederation Line which bus routes feed destroys mass transit in this city.

An abundance of carelessness. You don’t let people ride a train that has been deemed close to catastrophic failure. These aren’t NASA astronauts who are constantly on the cusp of catastrophic failure. These are your garden-variety Ottawans who just want to get to work.

An abundance of arrogance. It kind of helps if you have staffers and politicians who put the safety of Ottawans first rather than their own reputations.

Pipsqueaks, Leiper And Clogged Traffic: WHOPPER WATCH

An abundance of construction. Cars are stuck in traffic. Light-rail construction and other construction such as at Westboro Beach (why do you need to reconstruct a beach? … it looked OK to me … sand, water, sunshine, air … what’s more to want?). Slowing completion of transit projects is slowing traffic.

There are probably a lot more ‘abundances’ but these appear to top the list.

Ken Gray

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