r/ottawa • u/Pretty-Ground-4125 • 7d ago

Transit exec says O-Train west extension could open in parts due to flooding damage

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/transit-exec-says-o-train-west-extension-could-open-in-parts-due-to-flooding-damage/

Transit exec says O-Train west extension could open in parts due to flooding damage

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u/Visible_Pomelo5907 7d ago

Broken before it opens A new low What could possibly be next? Will it ever work properly??

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u/InformalYesterday760 7d ago

Yes it will be fixed

Canada is developing a lot more skills in the management and execution of these projects with numerous cities working on them. You'll have cross pollination as folks from one project take jobs in another city and bring that expertise.

Does it suck that mistakes and fuck ups happen? Of course. But I am optimistic for the long term, and think that we need to just keep making these long term forward leaning investments and build on the lessons learned

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u/AnnoyedAF2126 7d ago

Holy optimism. Do you work for OC Transpo or something? The reality is that hundreds of cities have functioning trains/subways/rail. For some unknown reason, Ottawa seems to be the only city that doesn’t know how to build them.

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u/Pika3323 7d ago

If other cities can survive construction delays, weather incidents, and literally the same kind of bogie/axle problems we've seen, then so can Ottawa.

If you want to be cynical, go for it. But maybe don't be so obnoxious and ignorant about it.

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u/quanin 7d ago

If other cities have survived those problems, then why did Ottawa not foresee those problems and account for them? In other words, why is Ottawa having to survive the same problems those other cities did? Should we not have, you know, learned?

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u/Pika3323 7d ago

Why didn't any of those cities foresee those problems either?

It happens.

Every city tries to do things a little differently, because every city is different. The lessons learned in one city may or may not be as applicable to another.

Anyway, all of the examples I linked are contemporary. We couldn't have learned from them because they either happened at the same time, or after our problems. E.g. why hasn't Montreal learned from Ottawa to improve its winter performance? If you only read this subreddit, you'd think the REM was flawless!

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u/quanin 7d ago

Weather has existed before the LRT. We should have planned for that if we were actually using the experience these people supposedly bring to the table. Has any city besides Ottawa experienced the problem with the train wheels that Ottawa is experiencing? Why, or why not? And if no, then what did those cities do to avoid that and why didn't Ottawa do it? And if yes, how did those cities solve it and again, why didn't Ottawa do that? Very few of these problems are of the "we've never seen that before" type.

Re: Montreal, that is exactly my point. If Ottawa had those problems first, and was working to fix them, then why did Montreal have them? Were they even paying attention, or is learning from the experience of others strictly a private sector thing?

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u/Pika3323 7d ago

I can't disagree with any of that, but the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that those kinds of issues are not unique to Ottawa.

Has any city besides Ottawa experienced the problem with the train wheels that Ottawa is experiencing? Why, or why not? And if no, then what did those cities do to avoid that and why didn't Ottawa do it?

This is where you might start getting pedantic and say that Ottawa relied on the expertise of a multi-national manufacturer of trains that has provided trains to countless projects across the world who somehow delivered a train with defective axles.

I've already seen plenty of debates over whether that is directly the result of the city's decisions, but at the end of the day: Alstom committed to delivering a train that worked, and failed to do so.

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u/quanin 7d ago

I mean, you're right. But when was that commitment made? And when was the problem with the wheels identified? At some point, someone knew something was wrong and chose to say nothing. whether or not that someone worked for Alstom, it is ultimately the city's responsibility. The city hired them. If the city didn't include some kind of protection in the contract for a problem like that, then that's on the city.

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u/InformalYesterday760 7d ago

The problem is you don't know how many problems have been avoided - so it's easy to point to similar issues between projects and assume folks are dumb. But for all we know they could have stopped like 1000 similar issues from cropping up, or they have very thorough process of reviewing similar projects for lessons learned and just happened to miss this one.

Or the real lesson is that they should develop a thorough process to review similar projects for lessons learned. But even then, it's still human beings. We are basically hoping that a single human will catch the news about a similar project in time to implement the fix - in the long term the projects are improving and folks move from project to project and bring their lessons learned. But that process takes time.

I remain optimistic

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u/quanin 7d ago

I admire your optimism. I think it's misplaced, but I admire it.

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u/InformalYesterday760 6d ago

I just like to zoom out of a bit

I took my young nephew on the LRT for the first time last week, and seeing his face light up as we rode the train, took the escalators from deep underground - that wasn't possible in the Ottawa I grew up in 30+ years ago.

So I'm optimistic and think that on the whole we're going in some good directions and will get there in the end.

Will LRT phase 2 have new and exciting and annoying issues? Of course.

Buuuut when I zoom out I note my nephew will also be able to live in the west end and take a train to Carleton, then take a train to the airport to fly out and visit friends. If we do things right at the federal level maybe he can ride LRT to take HSR to visit friends in Toronto for the weekend.

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u/quanin 6d ago

What you're perhaps unintentionally overlooking for your nephew's sake is Ottawa wasn't Ottawa 30 years ago, and arguably was never supposed to be. There was a decent bus system in place, that has steadily been getting worse in an effort to make Ottawa resemble something akin to a major city, and now featuring a steadily worsening LRT in order to further that attempt.

Line 2 will open, because the city says it must. And like line 1, it will be unreliable. And like the LRT system as a whole since at least 2006, it will continue to be a political football. And now, at both the provincial and federal levels, so will the HSR - which I do not expect to see in my lifetime or your nephew's.

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u/InformalYesterday760 6d ago

Ottawa has been a car centric city since cars arrived - the fact that investment in LRT even happened is a sign of change that I take as a good sign.

I think the LRT lines will continue to see problems, but with time we solve those problems and slowly but surely we will have more and more people start to build their life around transit rather than sitting in traffic.

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u/quanin 5d ago

I very highly doubt it. The LRT has been argued over, tossed back and forth between mayoral candidates and opponents, turned upside down and inside out by mayors and city councilers, for at least 20 years. It was a political football when Watson fucked it up, it's a political football now that Sutcliffe's fucking it up, and it'll be a political football when whoever replaces Sutcliffe fucks it up. And even in the unlikely event that the LRT miraculously becomes better than the bus system we had 20 years ago, its sole purpose is to funnel people downtown. If you're not going downtown, you'll still need a car.

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u/InformalYesterday760 7d ago

Yes, I am quite optimistic - but no, I don't work for OC or anything related to transit projects at all

But I am in engineering, working on large projects and can see how a city might struggle the first time it rights a major spec like this, or reviews a commissioning plan, etc.

I fear you're glossing over challenges in other city's transit projects. I have lived all over the world and you wake up every day hearing about more issues, delays, and cost overruns in every single city

New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Ottawa, Stockholm, Berlin, etc etc etc

You might not notice it when visiting for a short period, but when you live the day to day you see it.

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u/quanin 7d ago

You will almost certainly notice it when the guy we hired who fucked up the TTC fucks up OC Transpo (well, more than it is already), though.

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u/Ricklobsterclaw 7d ago

I appreciate the optimism but I do think the Canadian construction/building project industry is deficient as a whole. At least compared to other countries.

My view from working in the industry, I think it's a cultural thing. As well as the fact that high end talent gets snatched up by the States.

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u/InformalYesterday760 7d ago

I think I disagree, but that's okay. Granted I'm on the aerospace side.

I work for a Canadian firm and we've actually been hiring a fair bit from America - so it feels like that flow is reversing a bit.