ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[plam]

Oops, didn't realize I had linked the French version! Mais...nous l'apprenons tous passionnément pendant de nombreuses années à l'école, no? :')

Certains d'entre nous sont québeçois d'origine.

[KevinL]

I didn't realize the Keolis was a French company. Now I know.

They're a 'French company' in the deepest sense... owned by France's national railway, SNCF.

[Coke6pk]

With Cambridge stops to be added within a few years.

Well that's good news! Much faster than I was expecting!

Coke

[ac3r]

Well stage 2 hasn't yet been confirmed I believe, but I sincerely doubt Cambridge will vote against it. It's the only thing that could save that place.

[catarctica]

I heard it wouldn’t be coming till 2025 or 2028? I low key already want a new line going thru king/Columbia and st jacobs farmers market (this one is more like a wishful hope).

[jeffster]

I heard it wouldn’t be coming till 2025 or 2028? I low key already want a new line going thru king/Columbia and st jacobs farmers market (this one is more like a wishful hope).

I know the OG plan was to have it run to St. Jacobs Farmers Market, and I believe, to the Galt Terminal. The 2nd Line was suppose to be along Victoria from roughly IRA and Bingemans (Lackner).

[Bytor]

I know the OG plan was to have it run to St. Jacobs Farmers Market, and I believe, to the Galt Terminal.

Not quite. That was only the potential maximum. The studies looked along the Region's entire Central Transit Corridor to see where it was likely to be needed, based on job & resident density, public transit use, and what residents thought of the route. The route from St. Jacobs to Ainslie was still in the 2011 documents as option L9, but if you go through everything you can see that how after 2007 most of the effort was focused on what in 2011 was called option L3 and which is what we got. But until 2011 there was no plan to have it run anywhere as it was still all hypothetical before then.

The 2nd Line was suppose to be along Victoria from roughly IRA and Bingemans (Lackner).

In the original planning process that went on from 2004 to 2014, Victoria St. was never considered as area under consideration was only the CTC.

Are you thinking of the "Moving Forward: 2018 Master Transportation Plan" documents that mention Erb/University/King and Highland/Victoria as hypothetical ION Stage 3 after 2041?

[Bytor]

I heard it wouldn’t be coming till 2025 or 2028? I low key already want a new line going thru king/Columbia and st jacobs farmers market (this one is more like a wishful hope).

When Stage one was finished, and we went through 2 years of "any day now" thanks to Bombardier, the quasi-official word from councillors and senior staff when asked was that the earliest Stage 2 would be started was 2025 based on ability to get funding from senior levels of government in a timely manner, and how fast ridership along the 302 would increase. 2028 is the new date given recently and seems to be merely a simple adjustment based on the Bombardier-induced delays in starting operations, and now CoViD-19 their effects on ridership.

Left unstated, however, has been what those ridership targets are that would trigger the process to move into final route plans, start expropriations, order more trams, open up RFQ and then RFP, and then finally construction. (Assuming funding is there, of course.)

Depending on local conditions, including like salaries for your staff, fuel/energy costs, etc…, LRTs become competitive with bus routes on an operational cost per ride somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 boardings per day, usually around 7,000, and outperform about 25-50% later. We left implementing our LRT until significantly later. As recently as 2018, the Region had been hinting that it would not wait as long in terms of the 302 getting crowded as it had for the iXpress 200 and 7, and that it might even be willing to do it slightly before it was fully viable in terms of that operating cost per ride. Those hints were always couched in terms of hurrying along densification being worth Stage 2 underperforming for a few years. Reading between the lines between of what local politicians said on the record or in just talking to people, a lot of people felt the Region was implying that it would do so in order to pacify Cambridge. After all, Cambriding having had to pay the extra property tax levies for Stage 1 while only being indirectly served by it is an undeniable political hot potato. Also, the usual 7% average annual growth for GRT ridership that is mentioned in Regional transportation documents wouldn't put what is now route 302 over 5,000/day until 2026  and over 10,000/d day until 2036, and that was seen by some as more evidence that Stage 2 would be built before it was viable in terms of that operational cost. (Numbers given to me by GRT for 2015-2018 showed an average of 10% annual growth, which would have brought the 302 to just under 6,500/day in 2025, do not know what recent, precoid numbers were.)

Maybe it's just me being cynical, but I think we have at least 2 and probably 3 municipal elections to go before we see a council authorise an RFQ for Stage 2 construction, because even if they get funding I cannot see political appetites (i.e., getting reelected) before the 302 reached 7,000 to 10,000 riders a day on average, likely some time after 2030. I will be highly surprised if the Council authorises Stage 2 construction at 5,000/day or fewer.

[ac3r]

after 2041?

For the sake of everyone in WR, I hope we build a second line before 2041...it shouldn't take a region of over 600'000 roughly half a century to simply build two "rapid" transit lines. eyerollemoji

Also, maybe this disaster that we call the ION could...you know...NOT use Bombardier for anything going forward? When is the last time you ever read anything about them that wasn't bad news? They're a terrible company. I think we only went with them because we or they or someone got some breaks if we bought Canadian, but that turned out to be a complete waste of time and money. Alstom may have had some wonky doors on the newest Otrain line, but at least they got trains in time - not 2-3 years later, incomplete with no APT and welding that was cracking after a few weeks.

[dtkvictim]

Also, maybe this disaster that we call the ION could...you know...NOT use Bombardier for anything going forward? When is the last time you ever read anything about them that wasn't bad news? They're a terrible company. I think we only went with them because we or they or someone got some breaks if we bought Canadian, but that turned out to be a complete waste of time and money. Alstom may have had some wonky doors on the newest Otrain line, but at least they got trains in time - not 2-3 years later, incomplete with no APT and welding that was cracking after a few weeks.

Well, depending on what Alstom does with Bombardier, using Bombardier in the future may not even be a choice (at least nominally). But if you think "wonky doors" is the best way to describe the O-train saga then I don't think you've been following it. The wikipedia page for the LRVs sums it up fairly well (in terms of vehicle issues, which are only part of the system's issues):

By early October 2019, the automated doors of the vehicles used by Ottawa's Confederation Line experienced faults if pried open or held back by passengers; this resulted in numerous service disruptions, some lasting up to 90 minutes due to a lack of proper procedures to isolate and disable the faulty doors while a train was in service. The vehicles also began encountering integration issues with Thales' SelTrac train control system that led to the on-board computer for some trains in service needing to be rebooted, causing delays of up to 20 to 30 minutes.[10]

Reliability gradually improved in November and December 2019. However, on December 31, 2019, electrical problems caused by improperly cleaned electrical contacts on the roof of the trains caused disruptions to passengers.[11][12] Then, throughout January 2020, service continued to suffer due to a combination of train and track switch failures. The trains' interior heating systems have been reported to be insufficient in Ottawa's sub-zero winter temperatures, forcing OC Transpo to consider adding heaters to the vehicles.[13] A manufacturing defect with the inductors used by the vehicles led to numerous electrical failures in inclement weather.[14] On January 30, 2020, the Confederation Line reached an all-time operational low when it was short five trains due to "recurring mechanical and electrical issues". Only eight to nine trains ran during the day.[15] The Confederation Line is expected to field 13 working trains during rush hour.

On July 2, 2020, cracks were found on two wheels of a vehicle during routine maintenance activities. A subsequent inspection of all vehicles found two more wheels with cracks, for a total of four across three different vehicles. As a result, half of the fleet is currently kept out of service each day so that every wheel on each vehicle can be inspected before the vehicle can be put back into service. On July 10, 2020, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada launched an independent investigation into the matter.[16] On September 16, 2020, the City announced that Alstom had determined that the root cause of the issue was an improperly aligned screw that caused stress on the wheel, resulting in the cracks. Alstom said it would replace every wheel in the fleet by early 2021.

If I'm not mistaken, a big part of why we chose the vehicles we did was to piggy-back on Toronto's order. Perhaps ironically, Toronto has ordered some of the same vehicles as Ottawa now because they fear Bombardier won't fulfill their order in time.

But anyways, from cursory reading of systems around the world, it seems like delays on new/custom vehicles is the norm, not the exception.

[ijmorlan]

By early October 2019, the automated doors of the vehicles used by Ottawa's Confederation Line experienced faults if pried open or held back by passengers; this resulted in numerous service disruptions, some lasting up to 90 minutes due to a lack of proper procedures to isolate and disable the faulty doors while a train was in service. The vehicles also began encountering integration issues with Thales' SelTrac train control system that led to the on-board computer for some trains in service needing to be rebooted, causing delays of up to 20 to 30 minutes.[10]

I read an article which said that any train with a door that wouldn’t close would be locked out by the ATP (automatic train protection) and could only be moved under old-school procedures essentially involving written authorization to use sections of track.

Total engineering fail; ATP has no business absolutely preventing a train from operating just because of door problems. There should be a procedure to inform the system that the door has failed, possibly install a temporary barrier, and continue on, even in service if appropriate.

What horrors lurk in the design away from areas where I can confidently assert the designers screwed up?

I hope this isn’t the way of the future: software industry practices applied to other industries. By this I mean products which, while technically meeting the spec, fail to operate in the way which anybody who actually thought about the problem for a few minutes would realize they should operate. The customer should not be responsible for thinking of all the obvious, goes-without-saying, features and putting them explicitly in the spec.

[tomh009]

If I'm not mistaken, a big part of why we chose the vehicles we did was to piggy-back on Toronto's order. Perhaps ironically, Toronto has ordered some of the same vehicles as Ottawa now because they fear Bombardier won't fulfill their order in time.

Even more ironically, Metrolinx had a whole lot to do with the delays, as they turned uncooperative once they were fighting BBD in court.

[Bytor]

Also, maybe this disaster that we call the ION could...you know...NOT use Bombardier for anything going forward?

"Disaster" is an unnecessarily hyperbolic mischaracterisation of ION.

Yes, Bombardier being so late on delivery was very frustrating, but once we had the working trams Keolis had things up and running in short order, and they have been reliable ever since. The problems with the EasyGO fare card system were also frustrating, but I am of the opinion that at least some of the problems were with users not paying attention and using the system incorrectly. Presto has had far more problems on almost every one of their installs. The TTC for example, has been having problems with their implementation for more than 5 years.

Frustrating? Sure. A disaster? Hardly.

When is the last time you ever read anything about them that wasn't bad news? They're a terrible company.

I'm guessing that you don't follow rail news, like, at all? Alstom, Siemens, Kinki Sharyo, they've all had their problems at one time or another. Alstom's clusterfuck with the Citadis Spirit for Ottawa. Siemens was forbidden from bidding on contracts for the London Underground for more than a decade from the early 2000s because a previous delivery was just as bad as Ottawa's from Alstom.

Prior to mid 2013 or so, well after Waterloo Region had decided to join the contract with Metrolinx, Bombardier Transportation was one of the top three largest rail manufacturers and had a highly respected reputation, 180° from Bombardier Air's. That had produced literally tens of thousands of locomotives and cars for the previous 40+ years, include more than 3,000 LRT trams. Unless you were expecting the Regional Council to have been psychic and able to tell the future, there were some very good reasons to go with Bombardier.

I think we only went with them because we or they or someone got some breaks if we bought Canadian, but that turned out to be a complete waste of time and money.

One of those good reasons was cost. The only other manufacturers who reportedly showed any interest in supplying trams for the ION were Alstom, Siemens and Kinki Sharyo, and if you go and google their contracts for the five to ten years prior to 2012 that got mentioned in the news, you'll quickly see that we probably would have paid close to twice as much for trams from one of them, based on those other known contracts. Even with the extra $20-25M in other costs caused by Bombardier being so late, we are still cheaper than what those three would have been.

Alstom may have had some wonky doors on the newest Otrain line, but at least they got trains in time - not 2-3 years later, incomplete with no APT and welding that was cracking after a few weeks.

If you think Ottawa only had a few problems with "wonky doors" then you weren't paying attention to what happened there.

They also had problems with control system integration the required 20+ minute reboots, various problems with the electrical systems which caused the trams to stop working in inclement weather, and issues persisted into January of this year when on one day they were short 5 trams due to recurring mechanical and electrical issues. They are supposed to have 13 trams on during peak, and 8 the rest of the day. And a whole bunch more.

Now contrast that to our trams. Bombardier may have been very late, but once we got all of them Keolis had the system up and running in short order and it has been reliable ever since.

So twice the price and all those problems? No thank you!

[Bytor]

after 2041?

For the sake of everyone in WR, I hope we build a second line before 2041...it shouldn't take a region of over 600'000 roughly half a century to simply build two "rapid" transit lines. eyerollemoji

Not if there isn't the ridership to make it warranted.

None of the remaining iXpress routes have riderships of more than 1,500 per day, pre-covid. Only the 201 was that high, the rest were at about 1,000/day. At 7% per year average annual growth that will take a minimum of ~18 years before the 201 reaches the lower end of the range where LRTs start to have a comparable operating cost per ride to a bus route, and ~23 years to the middle of the range. So we are, realistically, looking at 2038 to 2043 before Stage 3 would be warranted based purely on operational cost. None of the numbers that I have gotten over the years from the GRT has suggested that the other iXpress routes ever had growth rates above system average like the 200/302 has had.

[tomh009]

Lots of unknowns in predicting the future: will more people work from home, how many people will live in the downtowns, will there be less parking available for cars, will more people walk or use bicycles, and more. Very hard to know.

And, whatever the actual numbers, we should remember that the LRT was built not only to carry people but also to promote intensification along its route. Building a stage 3 should mean building it wherever we expect the next stage of intensification to be. And at the moment we still have a lot of capacity to intensify along the current stage 1 route, so that urgency is not there yet. 10+ years before we start going down this path, I expect, subject to change of course!