LRT In State Of Apprehended Derailment: GRAY

“Right now, the issue is there isn’t a long-term solution. The cause hasn’t been identified. So these mitigations are short-term fixes to try and ensure that any potential issues are caught before the LRT is put into service.”

Vincenzo De Angelis, Transportation Safety Board executive

Ottawa is approaching two years since the last major LRT derailment.

Two years.

Yet no one knows the root cause of the very serious problems that are stopping the train repeatedly.

What OC Transpo is doing is fixing the symptoms but not the disease. So if you don’t cure the disease, the symptoms will continue to reappear.

So far publicly, OC Transpo is looking for a cause and is exploring heat, humidity and people. Now you know why it has been two years with no solution to our grim LRT woes. What next? Squirrels, gerbils and beavertails? Atmospheric pressure? Airborne smoke? Maybe man was never meant to take light rail.

Here’s the deal … short and sweet. OC Transpo was, at best, vague about what is the nature of that pile of hundreds of axles pointed out by a transit union executive. We need lots of parts, Transpo says. Sorry but those are “bad” parts … used axles … hundreds of them.

So, unscientifically, here’s what The Bulldog believes is happening. As long as the root cause of the problem is not discovered and fixed, the bearings on the train wheel assembly will continue to break. If they break when the train is operating, it will quite likely derail. We know that the immediate cause of the derailments are those breaking bearings.

Still No Restart Date For Confederation Line

But here is the scary part. Until OC Transpo discovers what is breaking those bearings, you can put new ones on until hell freezes over but that is not a fix. They will break again. So that means there’s a chance that those bearings will go when you are on the train. OC Transpo caught that faulty bearing this time. Maybe the bus company will always catch them. Or not. We absolutely know those bearings will break. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

And that’s likely, frighteningly, why there are hundreds of bad axles piled up at the Belfast Yards.

Frankly, it’s difficult to know why OC Transpo shut the line down. It’s situation hasn’t changed in two years and the line has been running … dangerously. They know those bearings will break. You can check all the bearings and they might work now (if Transpo is giving us the whole story, which is doubtful) but they will break prematurely. That is sure. Experience tells us that is the case. The train shutdown shows exactly how dangerous this train is. OC Transpo closed the Confederation Line because the company was afraid of a derailment.

You are one careless safety check away from a crash.

They’re not looking for the root cause at present. They’ve taken two years and, incredibly, still can’t find that (or that root cause is so politically unpalatable to fix that no one wants to say what it is … as in all new rolling stock using conventional designs).

So why doesn’t Transpo get a better bearing? Well the TSB says that the bogeys, the cartridges, the hub assemblies, the flat and cracked wheels are all up to industry standards. And they work elsewhere on other systems in other cities but not here.

So the problem comes down to the basic design of the train, the re-engineering the city requested and got or the tracks. To find the root cause, you’re not looking at the bearings. They will break yet they are up to industry standards. Instead, there’s something basically wrong with the rolling stock or the tracks. The broken bearings are the result, not the cause.

Here’s what your agent believes.

It’s difficult to buy that the root cause of the breaking bearings is not known now. It’s possible, but not likely. It’s possible that Ottawa could experience snow in July, but it’s not likely. Two years and no answer? Come on.

That means that for two years OC Transpo can’t find the root cause of the derailments. It might have taken less time to invent the wheel.

Your agent does not believe that they don’t know the root cause after two years. Impossible.

So that leaves us with two alternatives:

First, the top people at OC Transpo are gruesomely incompetent and the city should be assembling cash for severances;

Or second, the real root cause is so politically and economically unpalatable that the City of Ottawa does not want to address it. Remember, the city is responsible for over-runs and repairs. There’s no help coming from the senior levels of government. And no doubt the bill for the effective changes to make this system is astronomical. Like new rolling stock with a conventional design that works elsewhere. Are we looking at a billion dollars there? The city budget is already in ruins. An extra billion might not be helpful.

So were this your car and a wheel kept falling off, you’d want a solution to that. Those flying wheels are always pesky. What if the solution is thousands of dollars of repairs to fix that wheel problem which really isn’t a wheel problem but perhaps a faulty chassis that would need replacing? Well, you might pay that huge bill and keep the car or it might be cheaper to buy a new car … one without the flying wheel option.

“Do you have a car without the flying-wheel option?”

“Why yes sir. Why don’t you step into our showroom.”

Ka-ching.

But rather than fix the root cause, the city and OC Transpo are throwing labour and parts and oodles of money at a quick fix that isn’t a quick fix. It’s an apprehended derailment … maybe. Those bearings will keep breaking until the root cause is found or revealed. And that pile of bad axles will grow so high that it might become an aviation hazard.

In the end as it always does, the buck stops at the doors of the mayor and councillors. They have lots of blame to take. They provided next to no oversight (or as we fondly say here at Bulldog World Headquarters, noversight). In fact, they signed over their noversight function to staff and didn’t that turn out well.

So if you want to know which councillors you should turf out on their chassis, back-date their first election day. Is it pre-light-rail approval? Then you’ll find their expiry dates are long overdue.

So were your agent a councillor (oh god no), I would line up the light-rail glitterati who can’t find a rail root cause in two years at city council and turn that chamber into a room that would make the Army-McCarthy hearings look like a tea party at Rideau Hall. That would make hell look like two weeks in Aruba.

And if can’t get the answers you want, have security escort them to human resources. You know, $2.2 billion is a lot of money to screw up. You might be able to get rid of them with cause.

But of course, council and the mayor are unlikely to do that because that’s not nice. We’re past nice. That was a long time ago. Sometimes Bulldog World Headquarters is nice-free.

No, hiring a night mayor is nice. But we have no reason to hire a night mayor. We already have a nightmare.

It’s called light rail.

“So what is the problem with light rail?”

Transpo Pulls Buses From Regular Routes For R1

“Thank you for the question, councillor. I believe we found the root cause. A gerbil blew.”

“Well thank you for that highly technical, insightful but oh-so-helpful explanation. Finally my constituents can put their fears to rest.”

No. Strangely enough, that’s not good enough. Fix it … now. Or leave.

People … good people who try to do what’s right and pay their taxes … are appalled by this disgusting light-rail display. They’re embarrassed for their good city. Imagine what Ottawa could do with $2.2 billion spent well. Billions squandered on something that doesn’t work. Then, on top of that, watching Transpo and city hall types squirm and spin and lie about the sheer incompetence of their work.

Make this end. Light rail is horrible and, incredibly, it’s getting worse.

City council and the mayor … do something valuable for a change on this sorry file.

Bulldog editor Ken Gray has been a reporter, editor, senior manager and columnist at five major Canadian newspapers over a career that has spanned four decades.

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The Army-McCarthy hearings.

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