The City of Ottawa says OC Transpo is considering several service plans for Sunday and during the work week as trains remain blocked on part of the Confederation Line, but those plans may affect other commuters.
Two trains got stuck on the line during a freezing rainstorm Wednesday when a significant amount of ice built up on overhead wires feeding the light rail system. An attempt to clear the ice on Friday caused more damage to the wires, leaving a third train immobile on the line. An attempt to move one of the stalled trains on Saturday caused further damage, with a fourth train immobile.
OC Transpo offers rail service between Blair and Tremblay stations, with the R1 service running from St. Laurent to Rideau and then another train line between uOttawa and Tunney’s Pasture on the west end.
Troy Charter, director of transit service delivery and rail operations, tells CTV News Ottawa that maintaining this R1 service will affect other parts of the bus network.
“Our commitment is to continue to provide R1 with as much service as possible, but I have to be 100 per cent transparent and honest about that, we know there will probably be other impacts to increase cancellations in other parts of the system,” he said in an interview. “Teams are working on this to try to minimize those impacts. And we will continue to work on this throughout the weekend.”
Workers repair a damaged LRT overhead power line. January 7, 2023 (Josh Pringle/CTV News Ottawa)
Students return to classes Monday, and some federal government employees who have been working from home since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic will return to central offices Monday, which would mean increased demand on the system.
Charter said there is currently no timetable for a full return to service.
“Our goal is to be back in service as soon as possible,” he said. “We’re not going to cut corners. We’re going to do this properly… I don’t have a time frame at this point, but we’re looking at multiple service plans for Sunday, as well as Monday through next week, depending on what happens the next day.”
MORE SUPERVISION
OC Transpo says it is putting additional oversight in place to monitor repairs on the Confederation Line as work continues to repair the line and restore full service.
Transit Services Director General Renée Amilcar announced the additional oversight team in a memo Saturday morning.
“OC Transpo is bringing in additional external oversight, in addition to the TRA, to closely monitor RTM performance, provide independent advice to OC Transpo and confirm that we have a solid plan to return service in this area,” she said.
“Once the inspection is complete, repairs to all damaged sections of the OCS will be completed before recovery efforts begin again.”
The TRA was hired to oversee the RTM after the derailment in September 2021. Amilcar did not specify who would provide additional external oversight.
Charter also did not specify who was providing the additional expertise, but said it was a team that had worked with the city on LRT before.
“We want to bring in other engineering consultants who have worked with us, with the city of Ottawa, and are very familiar with the design of the line. They are consultants that we worked with through the build phase, the design phase of the system, so we wanted to get them involved as well,” Charter said.
“At this point, given where we are, we didn’t want to bring in a separate consulting firm that needed to be briefed on the situation … we needed to bring in people familiar with the system who could help us immediately.”
‘I’M AS DISAPPOINTED AS ANYONE’ SAYS MAYOR
Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says this week’s outages are definitely disappointing.
“Like all the residents and passengers of the OC Tranpso, I’m as disappointed as anyone,” he told “CFRA Live with Andrew Pinsent” on Newstalk 580 CFRA Saturday morning.
Sutcliffe said OC Transpo and the city are bringing as much expertise as possible to help resolve the issue and ensure reliability going forward.
“We need a reliable service; we need a service that people can feel confident in,” Sutcliffe said.
He noted that prior to the current problem, the system was working reliably.
“For the last nine months, we’ve had a very reliable system,” he said, while acknowledging that was part of the train’s troubled history. “Whenever an event happens with our light rail system, it gets added to a list. This is not an isolated event; it’s part of an ongoing saga of this story that we’ve been playing out for the last roughly four years.”
A train stalls between Hurdman and Tremblay stations on the Confederation Line, January 7, 2023 (Jeremie Charron/CTV News Ottawa)
He told CFRA that introducing additional oversight is a good thing.
“They’re bringing in expertise from the outside, which I think is great. Anytime we have a problem and there are other people who can help and have more experience with it, fantastic,” he said.
“It was an unfortunate series of events. When they tried a solution, unfortunately it didn’t work and in some cases even added to the problem, and that can happen sometimes, but they are doing their best to fix this.
Sutcliffe campaigned to improve public transport, specifically the LRT. One of his moves was to create a City Council subcommittee specifically to oversee the LRT project as Phase 2 begins.
“I think what’s encouraging here is that we’re seeing OC Transpo and the office of light rail and RTG and RTM working effectively and collaborating effectively to find a solution here, bringing in outside expertise, those are all the things , that you want us to see what happens when problems arise,” he said. “Of course, you want problems to be as few as possible, but when they do happen, you want to see everyone on deck communicating effectively.”
–With files from CTV’s Jeremy Charron.
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