‘It is safe to ride the train,’ OC Transpo general manager assures travellers following safety board report on LRT issues

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Renée Amilcar, Ottawa’s transit general manager, has assured travellers that OC Transpo’s LRT trains are safe and that the city is working hard to find a permanent solution to axle troubles that have bedevilled the Confederation Line since its launch.

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“It is safe to ride the train,” Amilcar said Thursday, as the city’s new LRT sub-committee met for the first time.

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“I took the train yesterday and I will take it again and again and again,” Amilcar said.

On Wednesday, the city released its response to a Rail Safety Advisory it received earlier this month from the Transportation Safety Board.

The advisory warned that cartridge assemblies, which house the bearings for the trains’ wheel and axle, are wearing out and breaking for a multitude of reasons. The cartridge assemblies “continue to pose a risk to safety until the issues are resolved,” the TSB advisory said. It was dated Feb. 3. 

The LRT sub-committee was formed as a result of last summer’s damning inquiry into breakdowns and derailments of the LRT system. On Thursday, it also heard the city’s response to the advisory. 

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The city has stepped up its inspections of the cartridge assemblies in response to the TSB’s recommendations, replacing vulnerable ones after 175,000 km of travel and conducting thorough inspections of some components as frequently as every 3,750 km. It’s also reduced speeds on curves to reduce wear and tear.

Inspections would take place about every 10 days of normal train use on the current 12.5 km track. Each inspection takes about a day to complete, said Director for Engineering Services Richard Holder.

Holder acknowledged the LRT is in “catch-up mode” when it comes to the troubled wheel and bearing assemblies.

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“But the plan is to find a solid solution so that we have a permanent fix and we can start to remove some of those more extreme measures that we have in place, such as the TSRs (temporary speed reductions), Holder said.

“Because we want to get back up to full speed with the vehicles and we want to remove all the additional maintenance and replacement of the axles as well.”

The safety advisory also recommended that the city install heat monitors on the wheel assemblies to warn of imminent failures. The problem with that, Holder said, is that the technology doesn’t exist for a light rail vehicle like Ottawa’s Citadis Spirit.

Instead, some trains have been equipped with vibration sensors to warn when there’s a problem and the city plans to outfit the entire fleet soon.

Meanwhile, engineers are studying all aspects of the system to figure out the root cause for two derailments in 2021 and a “near-catastrophic” failure of a cartridge assembly in July 2022.

“There are hazards and risks associated with huge infrastructure projects like the LRT. We’re constantly responding to how the system is performing and if we need to make changes to the measures we have in place, we will do that,” Holder said.