ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

So someone will share this magical PDF update prior to Tuesday’s meeting? Yes?

For attending do you just show up a little before 7, and then they let you in after the closed session goes “open” or something like that?

For attending, yes, you show up at the time the meeting starts, council will be open, I'm pretty sure that the in camera meetings are held elsewhere.

However, the P&W meeting on Tuesday starts at 10:30 AM.  I occasionally listen to it online from work if it's an issue I care about, but I've only ever attended when I have been delegating, otherwise, it just takes too much time out of my day.

I'm not sure if there will be additional materials released before the meeting or not--sadly minutes take a fair bit of time to come out afterwards.

[Pheidippides]

The webcast link is http://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/region...bcast.aspx

The webcast has not been working the last few months during upgrades to council chambers, but tomorrow's meeting is on the schedule.

Also keep in mind though that the start time is fluid. If the committe meetings before it are running fast/slow that will change the start time.

The minutes are a bit delayed coming out, but they often republish a revised agenda with the new/changed reports the day of the meeting.

[trainspotter139]

You are assuming that weekend labour costs are greater than weekday costs. It could be that that as long as the shift is scheduled far enough in advance and not in excess of the length of a regular day that it is considered a regular shift and not OT.

I am making that assumption, but I don't think it's undeserved.  Again, it *might* not be true for drivers, if they have enough drivers such that none are working more than a five day work week, but I suspect it probably isn't true for the dozen engineers and other auxiliary personnel who are also work on testing the train, who didn't sign up for a weekend job. Construction usually costs more when done on weekends.

Transport Canada sets a maximum limit that the drivers are allowed to work in any given Day/Week/Month which is why they couldn't do weekend/night testing without breeching those limits. Now that they have enough drivers to do it, they'll be using all those new opportunities to test the line as much as they can.

[trainspotter139]

I can still see it happening for December. Once 511 is done debugging they can open the floodgates and let all the equipped trains out. They 505, 507, & 509 can get theirs installed

While I appreciate the optimism when I consider that the custom equipment for the other LRVs here in Waterloo started 113 days ago or 79 work days ago (on July 16) I can't imagine how it is possible to meet the December timeline.

Even if they can get the installation to a quarter of the first round of installation time, say 20 days, and work 7 days a week, you are still looking at November 25.

Even if they can finish testing the trackside signals and timing between now and then they would still have to fit in testing all the newly installed specialized equipment, burn-in time, simulated service, and other testing. I could see the remaining Kingston vehicles arriving before year-end, but even that seems unlikely at this point (I think 501 will be the hold up; and even when they remaining trains arrive they will have testing that needs to be done).

Again, I appreciate the optimism, and I hope I am wrong, but I cannot see it opening in December 2018 even with a reduced service level.

You are too cynical. The reality is the specialized equipment systems can be completely tested with as little as 6 vehicles equipped with the FIE. While we haven't seen them out yet, we can't just assume that 502-504 aren't completed yet and 514 should be shipping pretty soon which would give us 12 vehicles. They've been using the same 3 vehicles for driver training and simulated burn-in testing for the past 2-3 weeks which to me sounds like 506 and 508 are having their time in the shop. Once the wayside systems are tested, you really just need to apply any changes to the onboard systems to all the vehicles and run them as normal. You could start burn-in and simulated service the day after completing all the FIE testing and then theoretically launch 2 weeks later. If they complete all the FIE testing by the end of November, they can launch in December. At this point any delays should be measured in days or weeks rather than months. 501 could arrive in the middle of December and we would still be able to launch in December.

[Canard]

Ohhhh I thought it was 7pm. Never mind then!

PS, I only posed that question yesterday for fun. I did not intend for people to jump down each other’s throats and start freaking out. (That’s ehy I deleted my post, when I saw where it was headed... sigh.)

[KevinL]

Personally, I don't see this LRT running anytime soon, and my guess is sometime between late spring 2019 and early winter 2020.

That's extremely pessimistic. Any later than early spring seems completely unreasonable, given where we are.

[Pheidippides]

Perhaps I am being too cynical; I guess we will see tomorrow!
 
I still think getting twice as many LRVs equipped with the specialized equipment in a quarter of the time seems unlikely.
 
I don’t think the simulated service test is going to be that easy to pass. Much like the burn-in test it isn’t just a box to check that the test was done; there are standards to be achieve and if the standard isn’t met the test has to be repeated from the start until it is. So if there is any kind of vehicle impairment the 600km burn-in has to be repeated until the test is passed without any impairments.
 
The  Demonstrated System Operation (simulated service) test is the same. They need to operate the system with an availability of 92.00% (DSSPF = (Actual Train in Service Points/Scheduled Train in Service Points)) over a five-day period or they need to keep doing the simulated service test until that is achieved. The point violations are extremely specific (e.g. leaving 15 seconds early to 1 minute late gets earns a full point, depart more than 30 seconds earlier and you lose the whole point – interestingly though you can leave up to 4.5 mintues to the number of minutes of the currently scheduled headway and still earn 0.7 of the point, you have to leave more than the current headway’s time to lose the entire point). Same on the arrival side of the ledger. Arrive more than 1.5 minutes early earns no points, but arriving 1 minute early to up to 3 minutes late earns you the full point.
 
So they could do 5 days of testing and only get 91.99% and have to do another 5 days of testing.
 
“This demonstration shall be called the "Demonstrated System Operation – Stage 1 LRT System" and shall involve day-to-day operation of the System in accordance with the Region-approved System Operations Plan. During the DSO, the System shall be operated continuously (without interruption), as though in passenger service (without passengers), in strict accordance with all operations and maintenance policies and procedures, until the System Service Availability specified in the Schedule 15-3 Article 3 Section 3.6 has been achieved over a consecutive 5-day operating period.”

[tomh009]

So they could do 5 days of testing and only get 91.99% and have to do another 5 days of testing.
 
“This demonstration shall be called the "Demonstrated System Operation – Stage 1 LRT System" and shall involve day-to-day operation of the System in accordance with the Region-approved System Operations Plan. During the DSO, the System shall be operated continuously (without interruption), as though in passenger service (without passengers), in strict accordance with all operations and maintenance policies and procedures, until the System Service Availability specified in the Schedule 15-3 Article 3 Section 3.6 has been achieved over a consecutive 5-day operating period.”

Actually, not quite. Based on the quote, they can continue the testing. If the availability was poor on day 1 or day 2, for example, they could continue to day 6 or day 7, and achieve five continuous days of operation that meet the SSA standard.

[Pheidippides]

Right, thanks for catching that.

[Canard]

Personally, I don't see this LRT running anytime soon, and my guess is sometime between late spring 2019 and early winter 2020.

That's extremely pessimistic. Any later than early spring seems completely unreasonable, given where we are.

It’s their opinion. They’re allowed to have one!

[jeffster]

That's extremely pessimistic. Any later than early spring seems completely unreasonable, given where we are.

It’s their opinion. They’re allowed to have one!

And that's all it is. I would love to see this up and running before Christmas, but being that not all the train are here, and likely more testing for the trains that are yet to come, I have serious doubts that it will start in December.

BTW: Regarding the issue that they had in Toronto with corrosion, does anyone know if we avoided those issues?

[KevinL]

Of course! I'm also allowed my opinion of their opinion.

[KevinL]

I believe our platform ticket machines are capable of dispensing something like these. Good to see it being tested!


Metrolinx testing disposable, ‘limited-use’ Presto tickets on TTC this month
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/me...ar-BBPnSFq

[plam]

I believe our platform ticket machines are capable of dispensing something like these. Good to see it being tested!


Metrolinx testing disposable, ‘limited-use’ Presto tickets on TTC this month
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/me...ar-BBPnSFq

Pretty much all transit systems I've seen have single-use tickets. Montreal has single-use tickets as well as tickets that are good for like a weekend (slightly burlier) and the long-term OPUS card.

[Canard]

I had always assumed our system would issue a paper ticket based on the fact that all the Ticket Vending Machines (TVM’s) have a little pop-machine flap at the bottom, just like every other city (except Toronto).