ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[trainspotter139]

Right.

It's been a long time since we had this type of crazy snow. CTV is saying 25-35 cm in the region, which might be the most in 20+ years.

Can't say were weren't warned, though I still feel bad for people stuck on highways (portions of the 401 in Toronto were closed as well). But at the same time, sometimes you just need to stay indoors until thing cleaned up.

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

Maybe the City/Region should invest in a couple of wing plow trailers for the single track sections ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[plam]

Speaking of trains and roundabouts, I did see a train track going right through a roundabout in NZ. That track doesn't get a lot of trains (and the roundabout doesn't get a lot of cars either). But it seems like going straight through is the thing. I don't think it was signalled, but different country etc.

[Bytor]

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

Maybe the City/Region should invest in a couple of wing plow trailers for the single track sections ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No. Just make better plans.

For example, when weather warning like this come out switch do a different set of priorities. Normally a bit of snow dumped on an LRT track by a snowplow doesn't matter because rail vehicles can handle snow better than rubber-tired road vehicles, but there is still such a thing as "too much".

When the warnings come out, put away the "Regular Snowfall Plan" book and get out the "Heavy Snowfall Plan" book.

First, add a refinement to the three priority tiers of when roads get cleared that now the drivers must stick to predefined routes which leaves off the side of Ottawa St. where the tracks are so nobody plows too much snow onto the tracks that would get the trams stuck. Humans make mistakes and somebody might forget because they are used to a plowing routine, so instead of blaming them we give them the tools they need to not make a mistake. In this case, a GPS device and a predefined route around their sector that omits the part that needs special/different care.

Second, take one of the tractor+blower & dump truck pairs off of DTK duty and send it down to clear that part of Ottawa St. When done it can head back to help in DTK. Send it back to Ottawa St. as often as a snowplow would go through.

Voila, alternate plan for snowfall that doesn't require more equipment.

Municipalities should have alternate plans made up for these occasional "once in 20 year" events, and to not have them is simply incompetence.

[Bytor]

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

I think in some cases the stuck vehicles was likely due to snow bank created by plow operators. Though in one of the cases, the unit stuck at Market Station, it was southbound, and there was very deep snow in front of it, but not from the a plow.

So I am guessing I saw these trains just after they started running again, and it doesn't look like that the tracks were cleared, at all.

I was talking to someone that works in transit in the USA, and his thought that our trains are too low to the ground, and that was most likely the issue.

Rail vehicles can handle snow more easily, but there still is "too much". We have low-floor trams, so that will affect what the "too much" level is compared to the videos of diesel plow locomotives ramming through 4m of snow at full speed. (They are awesome, BTW, go find them on youtube if you've never seen it.) In many regular (for here) snowfall scenarios, the much smaller amount that plows would deposit on the tracks is not normally a problem

In any case, Kitchener snowplowing plans should have included a "Heavy Snowfall Plan" version where something different is done for places like the Ottawa St. section with tracks on the one side. Such as having a regular snowplow only do the one side, and have the other side done by a tractor+blower & dump truck combo like what is used in DTK.

To not have had plans around to cover scenarios like this that, while not common, wil still happen multiple time sin the life of any given person, is incompetence. To put it bluntly.

[Bytor]

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks

Well...where are they supposed to put the snow? Snow plows - at least the ones we/most cities have - have angled blades that push it to the right side. Some sections of the track do run on the right side of where vehicles drive. Unless we bought a fleet of plows that have snow blowers that can blow it into a dump truck (which is extremely inefficient), they have to push the snow somewhere. Example, places like this or this. The normal snowplows don't or can't plow this since there is a curb and because the plow can damage the track, so there will be challenges.

When they designed and engineered this thing, they tried to put the tracks in the middle as much as they could for these sort of issues, but there are still sections it was not possible. And, since we live in a climate where we get tons of snow (sometimes, anyway), there will be challenges with snow removal. TBH, the system here runs okay. Comparably, I've spent a lot of time in Russia where they have heavy snowfall and streetcars/trams just like ours (sure it's "rapid transit" LRT and grade separated but still suffers from the same problems with climate and is as slow as a streetcar) and over there you still face days where the snow buggers things up. It's a pretty normal thing, though over here you'd think we would invest in better clearing measures given that we're economically superior.

The same way they do it in DTK. Tractors with blowers and a dump truck following them.

In heavy snow fall pull out the secondary plan book which moves priorities around. It tells the snowplow operators to not cover that stretch of Ottawa street, and takes one of the tractor/dump truck teams from DTK to clear that stretch of Ottawa St. When done, they go back to DTK. No extra equipment needed, just a rejigging of priorities.

Yes, more snow than usual causes problems, but it can still be planned for and to not do so is, to put it bluntly, incompetence.

[Bytor]

"Too low to the ground"...they are low floor trains, that's a feature, not a mistake.

But low floor trains come with compromises, ground clearance is one of them, but one that I suspect is not really a big deal. If the snow was piled so high that ground clearance was an issue, I suspect there would be other problems with pushing through it.

I don't even get why the hell we went with low floor trains. They make sense for trams and streetcars where passengers get on and off on the street or platforms no higher than a normal curb, but for our LRT? They still require platforms - in our case ours are at least 30cm+. We could have just purchased normal trains and raised the platforms, though I suspect one reason why is because we felt compelled to purchase from Bombardier, who completely screwed up our order with delays and resulted in 11 of them about to fall apart until Bombardier mechanics came to repair them anyway.

I wonder...if it wasn't for Bombardier, maybe our LRT would have launched on its start date rather than something like 3 years later and then wouldn't have the welding issues that caused even more problems. And if we went with non-low floor trains, perhaps 20-25cm of snow wouldn't cripple our entire rapid transit system.

In this case it wasn't just 25cm of snow, it was slushy-packed-hard-and-refroze-crunched-up-by-traffic snow that was plowed onto the tracks in addition on and of the fallen fluff. That's some heavy crap to push through.

Without that, based on operations of other systems in snowy countries, one tram, maybe two, operating through night would have been sufficient to keep the tracks cleared as it was all light fluff and the deposition rate wasn't so quick that in two hours it would have been more than a tram could handle. Call in a couple of afternoon-shifters for 1am and they do three loops 1am, 3am 5am. At that point regular service starts and you're good. The afternoon people get 6 hours or more before they need ot get up and come back in.

[jeffster]

The same way they do it in DTK. Tractors with blowers and a dump truck following them.

In heavy snow fall pull out the secondary plan book which moves priorities around. It tells the snowplow operators to not cover that stretch of Ottawa street, and takes one of the tractor/dump truck teams from DTK to clear that stretch of Ottawa St. When done, they go back to DTK. No extra equipment needed, just a rejigging of priorities.

Yes, more snow than usual causes problems, but it can still be planned for and to not do so is, to put it bluntly, incompetence.

This problem though would appear to be a regional or GRT/Grandlinq issue, not City of Kitchener. I'm not even sure if the city would be allowed to do snow removal on those tracts.

Either way, hopefully something was learned from this snow event.

[KevinL]

Either way, hopefully something was learned from this snow event.

Big upside, that lesson was learned on a day that ridership was lower due to the pandemic and relatively fewer passengers were impacted.

[Bytor]

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

They have a pretty bad operator shortage at the moment and are operating by maximizing Transport Canada limits on operator drive time and occasionally cancelling some train trips. If it were possible for them to operate trains after hours they would have. But when you hit that TC hours limit you're basically screwed.

Maximum duty period is 12 hours with a minium sleep time of 5 hours in the preceeding 24 hours or 12 in 48. The snow wasn't falling that fast, so after 2 hours a tram would have have been more than able to get through and clear light fluffy snow. (I mean, look how many hours it was before the snowplows came out.) So end of service at 12:00am, start at 5:00am, you call somebody to start at 1:00am with a loop to cover all tracks, they get half an hour break, then do another loop at 3:00am. Things are fine until normal start of service with the first trains going out a 4:45am. They worked for 3.5 hours if you include the 30 minute break. They go home, sleep until noon, come back in for their 8 hour shift at 1pm. All without declaring an emergency which allows them to abrogate those rules.

[Bytor]

The same way they do it in DTK. Tractors with blowers and a dump truck following them.

In heavy snow fall pull out the secondary plan book which moves priorities around. It tells the snowplow operators to not cover that stretch of Ottawa street, and takes one of the tractor/dump truck teams from DTK to clear that stretch of Ottawa St. When done, they go back to DTK. No extra equipment needed, just a rejigging of priorities.

Yes, more snow than usual causes problems, but it can still be planned for and to not do so is, to put it bluntly, incompetence.

This problem though would appear to be a regional or GRT/Grandlinq issue, not City of Kitchener. I'm not even sure if the city would be allowed to do snow removal on those tracts.

Either way, hopefully something was learned from this snow event.

I didn't say to have the city clear the tracks, though. I was only talking about clearing the road in a way that does not involve dumping it on the tracks.

[tomh009]

The same way they do it in DTK. Tractors with blowers and a dump truck following them.

In heavy snow fall pull out the secondary plan book which moves priorities around. It tells the snowplow operators to not cover that stretch of Ottawa street, and takes one of the tractor/dump truck teams from DTK to clear that stretch of Ottawa St. When done, they go back to DTK. No extra equipment needed, just a rejigging of priorities.

Yes, more snow than usual causes problems, but it can still be planned for and to not do so is, to put it bluntly, incompetence.

This problem though would appear to be a regional or GRT/Grandlinq issue, not City of Kitchener. I'm not even sure if the city would be allowed to do snow removal on those tracts.

I think Bytor is talking about the clearing of the streets next to the tracks, which plowed a lot of snow onto the tracks.

[plam]

In this case it wasn't just 25cm of snow, it was slushy-packed-hard-and-refroze-crunched-up-by-traffic snow that was plowed onto the tracks in addition on and of the fallen fluff. That's some heavy crap to push through.

Without that, based on operations of other systems in snowy countries, one tram, maybe two, operating through night would have been sufficient to keep the tracks cleared as it was all light fluff and the deposition rate wasn't so quick that in two hours it would have been more than a tram could handle. Call in a couple of afternoon-shifters for 1am and they do three loops 1am, 3am 5am. At that point regular service starts and you're good. The afternoon people get 6 hours or more before they need ot get up and come back in.

Although refreezing is a pattern that they should be familiar with, it wasn't what happened in this case: the snow was light and fluffy during the interval in question and longer; I brushed it off my car fairly easily and I didn't see it being frozen when I walked through Waterloo and Kitchener. There were piles of snow next to the tracks though. I also admit that I didn't see what the actual obstacles were here.

[Bytor]

In this case it wasn't just 25cm of snow, it was slushy-packed-hard-and-refroze-crunched-up-by-traffic snow that was plowed onto the tracks in addition on and of the fallen fluff. That's some heavy crap to push through.

Without that, based on operations of other systems in snowy countries, one tram, maybe two, operating through night would have been sufficient to keep the tracks cleared as it was all light fluff and the deposition rate wasn't so quick that in two hours it would have been more than a tram could handle. Call in a couple of afternoon-shifters for 1am and they do three loops 1am, 3am 5am. At that point regular service starts and you're good. The afternoon people get 6 hours or more before they need ot get up and come back in.

Although refreezing is a pattern that they should be familiar with, it wasn't what happened in this case: the snow was light and fluffy during the interval in question and longer; I brushed it off my car fairly easily and I didn't see it being frozen when I walked through Waterloo and Kitchener. There were piles of snow next to the tracks though. I also admit that I didn't see what the actual obstacles were here.

I emailed the City and Region and I was told that places where the trams got stuck were because of the piles of snow pushed onto the tracks by snowplows.

[Bytor]

I half-heartedly tried to google this but I couldn't find an answer:

Do we know how reliable our Flexity Freedom trams have been?

They weren't properly finished and had a to have a bunch of work done to enable ATC and things, but that's not reliability. Neither is car drivers turning in their paths. The frame welding issue doesn't make them, less reliable now, only 10+ years in the future.

Have there been any news reports on tram reliability?

[danbrotherston]

I half-heartedly tried to google this but I couldn't find an answer:

Do we know how reliable our Flexity Freedom trams have been?

They weren't properly finished and had a to have a bunch of work done to enable ATC and things, but that's not reliability. Neither is car drivers turning in their paths. The frame welding issue doesn't make them, less reliable now, only 10+ years in the future.

Have there been any news reports on tram reliability?

I've not seen any reports.

But we don't have a lot of spares, if they had reliability issues, we'd be seeing service issues.