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The Trillium Line has cleared its biggest hurdle, successfully completing a 14-day trial run it had to pass before the city would accept its newest light-rail transit line.
“As the future maintainer of Line 2 and Line 4, TransitNEXT has successfully completed their final exam,” Transit general manager Renée Amilcar said Monday, saying she made the announcement with “humility and great joy.”
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“We have not reached the finish line,” she cautioned. “With the first phase of trial running complete, our focus now shifts to putting our operational planning into practice.”
The train achieved a 99.5 per cent reliability standard in a rolling average over the two-week trial, easily meeting the 98.5 per cent passing grade set by the city. After narrowly missing that mark on Day 1 with a 98.3 per cent score, the testing surpassed the standard for the next 12 days, scoring a perfect 100 per cent on six of them. Reliability on Sunday, Day 14 of testing, was 98.4 per cent, but did not affect the final grade.
A second seven-day phase of trials began Monday afternoon, when the operator will practise 15 different situations such as what to do if there is a stalled train, a delay caused by problems opening or closing doors, or how to operate when the line is reduced to a single track. This phase isn’t part of the pass/fail decision but is described by Amilcar as a chance for OC Transpo operators to “play” with the new system.
The testing of trains, track and operating systems is “to allow TransitNEXT and OC Transpo staff to grow confidence and expertise with the system in a variety of operating conditions,” said Troy Charter, director of rail operations, in a media briefing Monday afternoon.
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Before the line opens for full passenger service, the city will also run two mock emergencies to help first responders prepare for the LRT, one at the Ottawa airport and one in the tunnel under Dow’s Lake.
While the trial run was successful, there are still a few more steps before the Trillium Line reaches “substantial completion” and the city takes ownership, Amilcar said.
“There are still a number of things we have to do, but this is a question of weeks, I would say, or maybe or days,” she said. “It’s nothing very complicated, but we do have to go there.”
If all goes well, the Trillium Line could have its operating licence and be ready to carry passengers in mid-November, Amilcar said.
That’s more than two years later than planned when the former O-Train line was shut down in the spring of 2020. The new construction extends the line all the way from Bayview to Limebank (Line 2), with a spur from South Keys to Ottawa airport (Line 4).
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