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The Trillium Line LRT delivered another three days of near flawless service over the Thanksgiving weekend. OC Transpo? Not so much.
OC Transpo cancelled 29 train trips to the airport on Saturday because there weren’t enough operators to run them. Because that shortage was a city problem and not an issue with the train or its builder, TransitNEXT, the cancelled runs didn’t affect the Trillium Line’s 100 per cent reliability rating that day.
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But had it been a regular day of service, commuters would have been riding to and from the airport on a bus, not a train.
“While TransitNEXT scores were excellent this weekend, the city experienced issues with staff availability on Saturday Oct. 12,” Renée Amilcar, general manager of transit services, said Tuesday at a media briefing.
The Trillium Line LRT requires 26 operators on a Saturday and has 10 operators on standby to cover for absences due to illness, vacation or other reasons. On Saturday, 11 operators weren’t available so OC Transpo took one of its scheduled trains out of service from 6 p.m. to midnight on Line 4, the South Keys to airport spur.
The 29 cancelled trips accounted for 16 per cent of the 175 scheduled trips on Line 4 and about eight per cent of all trips on the Trillium Line. All 172 trips on Line 2 between Bayview and Limebank stations ran as scheduled on Saturday.
Line 4 was chosen for the cancellations because it’s a short line and easier to replace with bus service than Line 2, she said.
The pool of operators for the Alstom and Stadler diesel trains on the Trillium Line continues to grow with one class in training, another starting this week and another class beginning in November, Amilcar said. The staffing troubles are part of OC Transpo’s learning curve during the trial run.
“Even with 10 extra operators, we were in this situation, so we will absolutely have to increase this number,” she said.
“We’re trying to find a balance. We don’t have 20 extras (on call) because that will cost a lot. And we don’t want to cut service. But we’re dealing with taxpayers’ money so we will not double this number (of on-call operators) just for fun.”
Sunday and Monday testing ran as scheduled with no operator shortage, she said.
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