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ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit
Maybe now people understand why I brought up the hole in the dash months ago...

...and we don’t need ion right now or as soon as possible. A few months will not kill anyone. We survived this long without it. It would be nice to start service early... but it would also be nicer to have a complete system on day 1.

This is a 100+ year project. Remember that.
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(04-14-2018, 12:12 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: Part of the reason that 6-8 months is required after the final vehicle is delivered is that the, "The vehicles also require the installation of specialized equipment that will allow them to operate at higher speeds, provide vehicle arrival time information, activate traffic signals when necessary, and better integrate with the transportation network. Installation of this equipment was also anticipated to occur in the eight months between delivery of the last vehicle and start of service. GrandLinq and Bombardier will be installing the equipment once construction of the base vehicles is complete. Testing of specialized equipment equipped trains is also required."

Which is interesting, because according to the project agreement it seems like that specialized equipment was supposed to be installed at the factory, "Project Co shall functionally test the integrated operation of all LRT Stop and wayside Train Control equipment prior to its shipment from the factory."

The burn-in test is required for the final acceptance certificate and is different from the simulated service testing; they are separate tests and are not intended to run simultaneously. One is a test of individual vehicles, the other is a test of the system.

As mentioned before the burn-in test is not as simple as accumulating 600km on the odometer. They have to be 600 problem free kilometers or else the odometer goes back to 0km and the test repeated until 600 is reached - problem free.

Pheippides, thanks for that info. But even if that "specialized equipment" isn't already installed in Kingston, it boggles the mind that such installation could take many months. The quote says it was supposed to "occur in the eight months", not that it would actually require eight months.

And, yes, the 600 km burn-in test may have to be repeated several times (we have a similar criterion for our company's software release) but if running the test only takes 2-3 days (15 round trips) it's hard to see how that one could take multiple months, either.
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I think the take-away is... we are not even close to full-up system testing. They've driven one train at a time around, slowly, over the route. None of the lights or signals are working automatically. We're very, very much in the "baby steps" stage. Hell, nothing has been out on the line for the past 3 weeks.

That is why it takes so long - because we're like 10% of the way into the test phase...
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All right … so why have they not started testing? Are we missing something other than trains (we do have four, so some testing should be possible)? Do we need the "specialized equipment" to start testing? Are the track repairs the gating factor? Something else?
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(04-14-2018, 12:12 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: As much as I would like to see the Ion up and running I think starting it at anything but the intended service level would be a mistake. You want every user's first experience to be a good (and lasting one). If it isn't even as good as existing bus service that will just fuel the nay-sayers and dampen momentum toward phase 2 (and 3).

The only analogy I can think of at the moment is a Broadway show opening without the full cast with the NYT theatre critic in the audience and needing a good review and word-of-mouth recommendations to be successful enough to convince investors to fund the next big show in development.

Thanks for the details, and I think you make a lot of good points.

However, I would suggest that opening with always-every-15-minute service would be OK. This only requires about 7 vehicles. This is planned to be the best normal off-peak service, and I think people would understand if we said “we’re waiting for enough vehicles to run better service during peak hours”. Opening with every 10 minute service would definitely be OK because the iXpress hardly ever exceeds that frequency, and the capacity of the LRT at every 10 minutes is way higher than an iXpress every 10 minutes. This requires about 10 vehicles.

My suggestion to open with 12 vehicles is even safer: brand new vehicles which have just completed a successful burn-in don’t need spares. By the time of the first (likely) failure, the remaining 2 vehicles will have arrived and completed their per-vehicle testing. And even if there was a failure, you could just revert peak hours to every 10 minute service until the vehicle is repaired.

I agree that opening with really poor service is a bad idea (say, every 30 minutes, unless a vehicle happens to be having trouble).

But all of these assume that the vehicle delivery is just going slowly. Right now it looks like testing of the overall system is going slowly, and since they have been stunningly uncommunicative about what is actually happening, we are left to speculate about causes, everything from sheer laziness to aliens.
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All excellent questions, which we don't seem to have answers for. My guess is that they've been using the data gleaned from the test runs so far to inform how to program and implement the more specialized installations, and that's been the focus of recent work (hence no broader tests). But that is purely a guess.
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Very disappointing but not unexpected.

The original opening was supposed to be fall 2017 right?
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So, is this really mostly Bombardiers fault? Didn't the region ask them to hold trains back until a few weeks ago?
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In happy news, my VIA train just passed an iON train all loaded up, sitting on a yard off the mainline just west of Kingston....
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Yay that means it's on the way. Anyone know which one that is?
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It'll be the next one (506), which was loaded more than a week ago... that's very disappointing that the freight operator still has it sitting there.
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(04-14-2018, 12:37 PM)Canard Wrote: This is a 100+ year project. Remember that.

Sure seems like it.

I remember telling my daughter before she started grade 9 that she'd take the ION to HS. With the latest delay, that won't happen.
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(04-14-2018, 05:38 PM)Canard Wrote: It'll be the next one (506), which was loaded more than a week ago... that's very disappointing that the freight operator still has it sitting there.

They won't pick it up from Bombardier if it's not on their manifest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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(04-14-2018, 04:09 PM)JoeKW Wrote: So, is this really mostly Bombardiers fault?  Didn't the region ask them to hold trains back until a few weeks ago?

  Actually, pretty much all their fault.

  Bombardier being a less than fully competent corporation is common knowledge.  They are also well know for missing delivery deadlines  The thing that adds insult to injury is the amount of corporate welfare they have received from federal governments over the years.  All the while being a public company with shareholders.  Just over a year ago they received just shy of $400 million from the federal government "to create new jobs".  Apparently those new jobs haven't resulted in vehicles being manufactured and shipped to our region as promised. Ironically, just a few months after receiving the funds from the government, Bombardier execs voted themselves $32 million in bonuses.
 
  In Toronto's LRT project, Metrolinx became increasingly frustrated with Bombardiers incompetency and asked a court for the right to cancel a contract with Bombardier as they doubted their ability to complete vehicle orders.  Metrolinx managed to reduce the size of their order from 182 vehicles to 76 and awarded a second company called Alstom to build vehicles instead.      
  Fortunately, the Region's LRT project started ahead of the proposed Hamilton and Mississauga projects.  Can you imagine where we would be at if all four projects were under construction/production during the same time period and there was an even larger demand for vehicles?.  Yikes.
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All aerospace companies -- regardless of the country -- receive subsidies, tax breaks and/or other government support. But that's irrelevant to the question of the root causes of the delay. Which we really don't know yet.
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