ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

They finally managed to get most of the route running around 1:15pm. Still out of service between Conestoga and Waterloo Town Square/Willis Way.

[ac3r]

Any word on what the reason for the failure was? I checked @grt_row this morning and they didn't post any updates.

[dtkvictim]

Eventually some woman fell over because she had nothing to hold onto.

Room to fall over? Sounds like room for more passengers to me!

[Bob_McBob]

Update 4:20pm: Nearly the entire line is down again from Conestoga to Mill due to a collision. The previous outage was never listed as resolved so I assume both are ongoing.

[Bob_McBob]

Just for posterity I think service finally resumed not long after my previous post. So nearly the entire line was out of service for 12 hours during the day.

[tomh009]

And barely any extra buses. I hopped on the 7 this morning and despite everyone constantly yelling to the driver that they can't move back and further, the idiot kept stopping to pick up more people. Eventually some woman fell over because she had nothing to hold onto.

In Japan, when it's super crowded, you simply cannot fall over ...

[nms]

And barely any extra buses. I hopped on the 7 this morning and despite everyone constantly yelling to the driver that they can't move back and further, the idiot kept stopping to pick up more people. Eventually some woman fell over because she had nothing to hold onto.

I know they dispatch the 301R but they never think to add extra 7 or 8 mainline buses.

Who is on the hook for running the 310R buses? Is it a one-to-one capacity replacement, or one-to-one vehicle replacements?

Adding an 7 or 8 mainline bus might seem like an easy fix, but I don't imagine that GRT happens to have a huge number of buses sitting idle waiting to fill in, nor are they able to pull buses easily from different routes to take up the slack.

[danbrotherston]

And barely any extra buses. I hopped on the 7 this morning and despite everyone constantly yelling to the driver that they can't move back and further, the idiot kept stopping to pick up more people. Eventually some woman fell over because she had nothing to hold onto.

I know they dispatch the 301R but they never think to add extra 7 or 8 mainline buses.

Who is on the hook for running the 310R buses?  Is it a one-to-one capacity replacement, or one-to-one vehicle replacements?

Adding an 7 or 8 mainline bus might seem like an easy fix, but I don't imagine that GRT happens to have a huge number of buses sitting idle waiting to fill in, nor are they able to pull buses easily from different routes to take up the slack.

This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.

[plam]

Who is on the hook for running the 310R buses?  Is it a one-to-one capacity replacement, or one-to-one vehicle replacements?

Adding an 7 or 8 mainline bus might seem like an easy fix, but I don't imagine that GRT happens to have a huge number of buses sitting idle waiting to fill in, nor are they able to pull buses easily from different routes to take up the slack.

This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.

It's true that GRT is much smaller than TTC, but it would be nice to have some reserve capacity for unforeseen events. Running lean is tough for resilience. And also it's not like there's a huge number of spare drivers around these days, anywhere.

[Bytor]

This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.

It's true that GRT is much smaller than TTC, but it would be nice to have some reserve capacity for unforeseen events. Running lean is tough for resilience. And also it's not like there's a huge number of spare drivers around these days, anywhere.

That leanness has bitten GRT in the ass frequently and in 23 years the Region has never thought to change it.

[danbrotherston]

It's true that GRT is much smaller than TTC, but it would be nice to have some reserve capacity for unforeseen events. Running lean is tough for resilience. And also it's not like there's a huge number of spare drivers around these days, anywhere.

That leanness has bitten GRT in the ass frequently and in 23 years the Region has never thought to change it.

All things being equal, I agree...

And if you ask me how to pay for it, I have plenty of suggestions for that.

But since none of my suggestions are remotely feasible today, increasing the reserve capacity involves cutting something else...would we want to cut some other service, and what should we cut? FWIW, the answer could be yes, it's clear that reliability is an important feature just like frequency, but I don't know.

[Bytor]

Who is on the hook for running the 310R buses?  Is it a one-to-one capacity replacement, or one-to-one vehicle replacements?

Adding an 7 or 8 mainline bus might seem like an easy fix, but I don't imagine that GRT happens to have a huge number of buses sitting idle waiting to fill in, nor are they able to pull buses easily from different routes to take up the slack.

This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.

Which is why the need to rethink their spares methodology.

When the ION LRT goes down to takes them half and hour or more to get a bus bridge in place. What really should be happening is all but one of the supervisors on shift should immediately each jump into a pre-checked bus and drive it to a point along the bridge route. Be there in 10-15 minutes or whatever the drive time is from the Strasburg or Northfield barns. That final supervisor coordinates getting any called in drivers to one of the bridge endpoints, picking them, up at the barn and ferrying if necessary. That way you can give the called in drivers 60-90 minutes to get in and replace the supervisor driving the bus. Since supervisors are required to maintain bus driver qualifications, there's no reason this cannot be implemented as part of their job.

The bus bridge should also be cleared to operate on the LRT right of way, since no running trams will be one it anyways, and to avoid traffic congestion.

[ijmorlan]

This is on point...I seem to recall GRT runs pretty lean in terms of spares...they're going to be hard pressed to pull in more than a few extra buses. If they know a delay is going to last an extended period, maybe they can pull in a few more, but many of us should think about how many of us would be able to jump up and go to work on our day off if our employer called.

Unfortunately providing really good resilience probably involves paying some drivers to be on call.

This is also a good reason to schedule a moderately excessive amount of service — if you need to cover a problem, lower traffic routes elsewhere can drop from every 5 minutes to every 10 minutes, for example. Also a good reason

This reminds me of a student project I once saw about providing transit within UW campus. If I recall correctly they proposed having a bus do a loop around campus a couple of times an hour, and costed it using averages of how expensive it is to run a bus for a certain period of time. The grader quite severely criticized them for implicitly assuming they could find drivers who would be willing to alternate 15 minute work periods with 15 minute unpaid periods all day.

[timc]

Unfortunately providing really good resilience probably involves paying some drivers to be on call.

This is also a good reason to schedule a moderately excessive amount of service — if you need to cover a problem, lower traffic routes elsewhere can drop from every 5 minutes to every 10 minutes, for example. Also a good reason

This reminds me of a student project I once saw about providing transit within UW campus. If I recall correctly they proposed having a bus do a loop around campus a couple of times an hour, and costed it using averages of how expensive it is to run a bus for a certain period of time. The grader quite severely criticized them for implicitly assuming they could find drivers who would be willing to alternate 15 minute work periods with 15 minute unpaid periods all day.

Which is a good case, I guess, for an autonomous vehicle.

[dunkalunk]

Unfortunately providing really good resilience probably involves paying some drivers to be on call.

This is also a good reason to schedule a moderately excessive amount of service — if you need to cover a problem, lower traffic routes elsewhere can drop from every 5 minutes to every 10 minutes, for example. Also a good reason

This reminds me of a student project I once saw about providing transit within UW campus. If I recall correctly they proposed having a bus do a loop around campus a couple of times an hour, and costed it using averages of how expensive it is to run a bus for a certain period of time. The grader quite severely criticized them for implicitly assuming they could find drivers who would be willing to alternate 15 minute work periods with 15 minute unpaid periods all day.

Which is a good case, I guess, for an autonomous vehicle.

Maybe we could keep Route 2 just so GRT could keep some reserve buses around. When ION goes down, the route is cancelled. It works perfectly because only really 2 trips a day on that route are used.