Ottawa Loses Faith In LRT, Transpo, City
Can Ottawans trust OC Transpo? No.
The bus company’s chief Renee Amilcar said the Confederation Line would likely begin a soft start on Monday. On Friday we were told that will not happen. Amilcar says you can add 10 days to that new beginning. And that’s likely to be a little on the light side if OC Transpo continues its ridiculously long history of disappointing the citizens of Ottawa.
Which brings us to an even more important issue.
In 18 months, at least by OC Transpo standard time, Amilcar says Ottawans will have a permanent fix to our O-Train woes. That the problematic hub assemblies will be completely redesigned. And that will be the end of the nightmare that is the Confederation Line.
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Except if we look at the history of Transpo and the city on this issue, that’s likely untrue.
Look at the form chart. Broken promise after breakdown after multitudinous patch-work fixes after basic design problems. Plus lies and spin and downright stupidity.
So we are to believe that a permanent fix of the train will be in place in 18 months? Given the past record of OC Transpo, probably not. With OC Transpo to competence like Lex Luthor is to Superman, the new hub assemblies will be made of kryptonite.
Do we expect the same people who gave us this mess to get us out of this mess? Their track record is horrible. We expect them to suddenly get better?
Good luck with that.
And why is it now, after years of breakdowns and derailments, that it takes these people until the system is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic failure, to finally decide that the hub assemblies need to be redesigned. From the look of that pile of hundreds of bad axles at Transpo’s Belfast Yards, all the city, the bus company, Rideau Transit Group and Alstom were doing was just throwing new axles at the train knowing full well they didn’t work and would have to be replaced in short order again and again and again. Hundreds of times, in fact.
How long has that been going on? Essentially, the city and Transpo have known for years that those hub assemblies are faulty and that the safety of riders is in peril after only a short period of operating time. Or maybe their safety has always been in question all the time.
The Transportation Safety Board, with world-renowned safety experts, says a combination of basic design problems are breaking the hub assemblies. Things like engines with too much power.
The one thing that meets industry standards is the hub assembly, according to the TSB. So Transpo, RTG and Alstom are fixing the hub assembly. It is the symptom, not the cause.
Transpo says a redesigned hub assembly is the answer. Transpo told you that the O-Train suffers from “normal derailments.” The city told you that everything in the train’s construction is “on-time and on-budget.”
Here’s what can be said with absolute certainty given the record of the Confederation Line.
The people running this terrible operation either don’t know what they are doing or they don’t care or they’re lying or spinning. Pick one, two or all of the above. No option is good.
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Will a dangerous train restart in 10 days? It’s possible given this project’s sheer incompetence.
And finally, will the so-called final fix of the hub assembly be the end of the O-Train’s problems? From the outside at least and looking at the OC Transpo form chart, probably not.
Were this a horse race with a thoroughbred named Transpo in the field, punters would bet on any other animal. So would most Ottawans.
The serious problems of the O-Train are unlikely to have a solution given what we’ve seen in the past, what the TSB is telling us and the incompetent parties involved.
The rot at Ottawa City Hall and this project is just too deep.
We saw going into the building of the Confederation Line that the City of Ottawa couldn’t run a procurement well (and didn’t this time) and couldn’t build much smaller projects successfully and efficiently such as the Aviation Parkway pedestrian bridge, the Hurdman Bridge and the Vimy Memorial Bridge.
How many times would you take your car to be fixed if your mechanic’s repair record was the same as Transpo’s? Would you buy a car with same reliability statistics as OC Transpo’s?
These guys are supposed to be experts in light rail. Obviously, they are not.
Is there any reason to believe this O-Train will ever operate successfully?
No, not really.
Ken Gray
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You must have missed parts of Friday’s press conference. 18 months is to start testing a new axle design. The forecast is 4 years to design, test, mass produce and install on every train.
Great! Then onto the next as-yet-unforeseen problem which will take how long to deny, review, rethink the denial, test, redesign, retest, mass produce, reinstall, repeat, etc I wonder what the most expensive project in the history of mankind cost. It might be time to contact Guinness.
By the time LRT is fixed, it will be out of warranty… did Jimbo buy the extended service plan?
There was a mass exodus from OC Transpo long before the axle issue became news. Basic stuff like buses arriving on time, LRT working continuously without surprise failures, keeping transit rider costs down not ever increasing etc. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays there is a crush of cars downtown. These are most likely taxpayers who have have grown tired of OC Transpo’s inability to provide a service level that is worth paying for. So they drive their cars and pay for parking. Ever notice how crazy the traffic is on the 417? I still see the majority of buses driving on the SJAM east and west bound empty or minimally loaded. LRT cars I see are the same. The city has to be fudging the ridership numbers because no way are they as close to pre-covid volume. Everyday Andy Haydon is proven to be the only politician who was correct and I’m pretty sure I know why. In 2007 I ran into him at a plumbing supply wholesaler. I was building my house at the time. He showed me a toilet tank lid that was cracked and asked me if I thought he could buy a replacement. That tells me that he didn’t suffer that that most destructive of public service thinking…..OPM. Which means other people’s money. Andy Hayden spent public money with the same eye to being frugal as he did his money.