Still no date for OC Transpo Trillium Line opening

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The operators are trained, the stations have been given their occupancy permits and the fleet of trains is performing well, but an opening date for the O-Train Trillium Line remains stubbornly elusive.

Already more than two years behind schedule, the north-south route with its key connections to Carleton University and Ottawa airport, is still weeks and likely months away from carrying passengers. And despite questions from councillors on the city’s LRT subcommittee and from the media, transit general manager Renée Amilcar could not be swayed into saying when the trains might run.

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“We will open the line. We don’t know exactly when,” Amilcar said. “We need to continue to run the system. We need to continue to develop the reliability. As soon as we will be ready, we will send a memo to council.”

At that point, OC Transpo will begin a four- to six-week testing program before the trains can begin service.

Work to expand and extend the Trillium Line began in May 2020 and the line was originally scheduled to open in August 2022. That deadline has continued to slip: to October 2023, to December 2023 and spring 2024. In July, Amilcar said she hoped to have “good news” for Carleton students in the fall.

That hope is fading.

Asked if she felt the repeated delays and the inability to say when the system will open would further hurt customer’s confidence in OC Transpo, Amilcar said, “I hope that people will see that we are sharing everything. We are an open book.

“We are here to deliver a good system because I think everyone deserves that. We are working with complex, technical things and we need to make sure that the system, all those things, need to be ready. I don’t know any system in the world without any bugs. We are hopeful that we will find those now and we can address them before we launch the service.”

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The fleet of diesel-powered Alstom Coradia LINT and Stadler FLIRT trains have been running up and down the Trillium Line all summer and have performed well, said Richard Holder, director of rail construction for the city. But one of the bugs that has emerged is an apparent discrepancy between the data being sent to controllers automatically by the trains and what the operators and controllers are seeing themselves.

“It’s a system issue and a software issue,” Holder said. “We don’t believe we’re in a position where we need to replace hardware.”

Committee chair Steve Desroches, councillor for Riverside South-Findley Creek, asked Amilcar if she was satisfied that the contractors were doing everything possible to speed completion.

“We’re patient, but our patience is not unconditional,” Desroches said. “The condition is that there is urgency. Are you satisfied that for the contractor it’s all hands on deck? That they’re working night and day and doing everything they can to finish things as quickly as possible?”

“The sense of emergency is there,” she replied. “But time is our best tool to make sure that we can capture those issues and correct them.”

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Meanwhile, Carleton students are just looking for some clarity, said Artur Estrela da Silva, vice-president of student issues for the Carleton University Students Association. He asked the committee for more information about when the line would open.

“We’ve been waiting for this project to be finalized since August 2022,” da Silva told reporters after his presentation. “There is a feeling of frustration, a lot of anxiety. An unreliable transit service … is one in which students have their mental health impacted. Students have tailored their life around transit. We’re all living on tight budgets.”

Even so, da Silva said he was satisfied with the answers he heard from the committee.

“The more important aspect is transparency. Students would rather hear a realistic answer than hear good news that may, unfortunately not come together for them.”

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