LRT Trillium Line has an ‘off day,’ scores 98.6 per cent reliability

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Testing of the Trillium Line achieved 98.6 per cent reliability on Wednesday, an “off day” by recent standards but still a passing grade for the long-delayed north-south LRT network.

Operators encountered minor “vehicle” and “track” issues during the day, which received the lowest score since the first day of trial running on Oct. 7.

The track issue involved a switch near Mooney’s Bay Station that did move automatically to the correct position as a train approached, forcing the system to pause, the City’s director of rail construction Richard Holder said at a media briefing Thursday. Controllers in the transit operation control centre were able to remotely change it to the correct position, he said.

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“TransitNEXT is currently investigating this particular switch to determine why it went out of correspondence and to determine what adjustments need to be made,” said Holder.

Unlike the Confederation Line, which has twin tracks its entire length, the Trillium Line has sections of single and double track that require “a dance” as Holder put it, with north- and south-bound trains passing each other at the twinned sections.

The second issue occured when a faulty speed sensor put a train into “safe mode” at Bayview Station.

“These types of issues are normal when a system is undergoing testing and commissioning, and even when we go into operations,” Holder said. “Every time we deal with one of these issues we have further confidence that issue will not occur again during operations.”

The system has achieved 100 per cent reliability on five of the 10 days of trial running, for a rolling average of 99.5 per cent. That average must be 98.5 per cent over the 14-day testing period before the city will accept ownership from builder TransitNEXT. If all continues to go well, the trial run will wrap up Monday.

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Nine diesel trains run on the two tracks of the Trillium Line, with Line 2 between Bayview and Limebank stations and Line 4 the spur from South Keys to the Ottawa airport. A total of 65 operators are needed to keep the trains running on their seven-days-a-week service.

According to the scoring system, “on-time” performance means trains must depart within 30 seconds of schedule from each terminus station: Bayview and Limebank for Line 2; and South Keys and the airport for Line 4.

When the 14-day trial run is complete, the system will enter a second, seven-day period of testing when operators will practise various scenarios including two mock emergency situations — one at the airport and one in the Dow’s Lake tunnel — and a day of full-dress rehearsal with volunteer city employees playing the role of commuters on trains and in stations.

That week of testing could end as soon as Oct. 29, meaning the Trillium Line could be carrying passengers for real by mid-November.

The Trillium Line uses two types of trains: the Stadler FLIRT and Alstom LINT. Unlike the electric-powered Confederation Line, Trillium Line trains run on diesel. Trains run every 12 minutes and can hold up to 600 passengers, with 300 in each of their two cars.

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Here’s what’s happened so far during testing:

Tuesday, Oct. 15

The Trillium Line LRT was back to perfect form during its testing Tuesday, keeping the rolling average at a steady 99.6 per cent.

It’s well above the necessary 98.5 per cent required for TransitNEXT, the consortium that built the new north-south line, to finish testing over the full 14-day trial run. If the train continues to score well, this phase of testing could be done Oct. 21.

The train needs to score an average of 96.5 per cent over the next five days to pass. A single-day score of 82.4 per cent could derail the testing program. So far, the lowest score was 98.3 per cent on the first day of running. On the majority of days so far, five of nine, the new line has scored a perfect 100 per cent.

Monday, Oct. 14

With eight days of the two-week trial run complete, the Trillium Line LRT is averaging 99.6 per cent reliability and easily meeting the 98.5 per cent passing score required by the city.

The train scored 99.4 per cent reliability on Thanksgiving Monday, slightly off the pace of the past few days but still easily above the minimum requirement. Barring any serious setback in the final six days of testing, the trial run should be complete on Oct. 21.

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It would take a single-day score of 82.4 per cent to knock the train off that target. The lowest day’s score so far was on the first day of testing when the LRT scored 98.3 per cent. The train has scored 100 per cent on four of the first eight days.

Sunday, Oct. 13

The LRT scored its second straight 100 per cent reliability rating on Day 7 of testing.

Sunday’s perfect score, reported to council Monday in a memo from Richard Holder, director of the Rail Construction Program, Transit Services, marked the fourth time in five days the rating had come in at 100 per cent.

More importantly, the score boosted the rolling average again, this time to 99.6 per cent.

Saturday, Oct. 12

For the third time since the start of testing last Monday, the Trillium Line LRT scored a perfect 100 per cent reliability rating on Saturday, boosting the rolling average to 99.5 per cent.

Friday, Oct. 11

The Trillium Line scored a 99.4 per cent reliability rating on its fifth day of testing Friday, keeping the rolling average to 99.4 per cent.

Thursday, Oct. 10

For the second day running, the Trillium Line LRT scored a 100 per cent reliability rating on its fourth day of testing. Thursday’s 14-day rolling average was 99.4 per cent.

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Wednesday, Oct. 9

The Trillium Line LRT scored a perfect 100-per-cent reliability rating on its third day of testing. Wednesday brought the 14-day rolling average to 99.3 per cent.

Tuesday, Oct. 8

“We remain on a very positive trend,” Richard Holder, director of rail construction for the City of Ottawa, said during a media briefing Wednesday. “It is still early days, but I’m pleased with the results I’m seeing.”

On Tuesday, one train had a minor issue with a CCTV camera that operators would use to monitor passengers, and another had a minor delay at a terminus station when the operator switched from the controls at one end of the train to the other, Holder said.

Monday, Oct. 7 — Trillium Line testing starts

The Trillium Line LRT achieved a 98.3-per-cent on-time performance during its first full day to trial running on Monday.

That was just shy of the 98.5 per cent score that builder TransitNEXT must achieve as a rolling average over the full 14-day trial running period, but City of Ottawa Transit General Manager Renée Amilcar said she’d take it.

“I’m very, very happy — 98.3 per cent is very good, especially for the first day,” Amilcar said Tuesday in the first daily briefing to reporters during the testing phase.

A minor brake problem delayed the deployment of one of the Trillium Line’s nine trains in the morning, while two other trains experienced problems with the CCTV cameras showing the operator the platforms and doors, said Richard Holder, director of rail construction for the city.

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