Amilcar says that the testing done over the weekend was a success
OC Transpo says that after almost a month of full or partial shutdowns, LRT riders in Ottawa will be able to ride the whole length of the city’s LRT network starting Monday morning.
In a memo sent late Sunday afternoon, the general manager of transit services, Renée Amilcar, said that testing over the weekend went well and proved that the entire Confederation Line was once again ready to take passengers.
That means that starting at 5 a.m., single-car trains will run between Tunney’s Pasture and Blair stations.
The memo said that during off-peak times, nine shorter single-car trains will arrive every six minutes. During morning rush hour, 11 single-car trains will run every five minutes, and during afternoon rush hour, 13 will run every four minutes.
Amilcar said that OC Transpo will keep running the R1, R1 express, and Para R1 replacement buses along with the trains on Monday.
The transit agency had said before that those bus routes would stop running on Tuesday, but Amilcar said in her memo that OC Transpo would share “additional information about R1 service going forward” on Monday.
A lobbying group says to keep the R1
The system was shut down on July 17 after a regular check showed that one of the trains had a problem with a bearing. OC Transpo said the problem was “similar” to what happened in August 2021 when a train derailed and in July 2022 when a wheel hub broke.
Over the past few weeks, workers have replaced the wheel hub assemblies on all of the trains and moved the restraining rails, which are meant to keep trains from getting off the tracks, so that they don’t touch the wheels.
On August 8, some LRT service started up again, but only between the Tunney’s Pasture and uOttawa stations. The line’s east end was still closed.
In her memo, Amilcar said that OC Transpo and the consultant Transportation Resource Associates had finished their final review of the documents given by Rideau Transit Group, the group that built the $2.1 billion line and recommended that it start running again on Monday.
Amilcar said that interim city manager Wendy Stephanson was “satisfied that the regulatory regime is in compliance” and agreed that service should start up again on Monday morning.
Even so, advocacy group Ottawa Transit Riders is still worried about the possibility that replacement and express buses could be taken out of service on Tuesday.
“My preference would be to hold on to the R1 buses until mid-September,” board member Kari Glynes Elliott told CBC before the memo came out Sunday afternoon.
“Even if it works pretty well for a while in August, once September comes, students go back to school, new people move to the city, and people who were on vacation come back. The real challenge will come when that happens.”
Elliott was also worried about what would happen to the rest of the transit system if LRT didn’t get fixed or broke down again.
“What they do is cannibalize the rest of the system,” she said. “They take drivers and buses from the suburbs and other systems to serve the R1.”
Elliott said that her group has also met with angry transit riders in Kanata and Orleans.
“People are saying that buses used to come every 10 minutes, but now they are only supposed to come every 20 minutes. However, they get canceled so often that they usually only come every 40 minutes. That’s a big difference, and it’s very, very annoying.”