ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bytor]

The Ion has now been in operation for over 1000 revenue days; it has been sidelined for parts of "at least" three days according to that CTV report. Overall, a pretty good operating track record.

More than that. It was three days this past (2022/23) winter alone. There has been at least a half day of lost service every winter since service started.

That being said, we know that the LRVs can be fitted with ice scrapers when bad weather is expected.  What I don't know is, in cases where the ice isn't present, does the scraper add any kind of wear to the catenary itself? How do tram lines in places like Finland manage?  Or is the case there that weather is generally drier (eg mainly snow and not freezing rain) and therefore a different operating condition?

The problem is definitely freezing rain and not snow. he problem is that the ice buildup on the catenary wires can only get a millimetre or so thick before the regular pantograph shoes. The special scraper shoes can handle much more but they add extra wear on the catenary wires. Snow just rests on op of the catenary wire and does not block contact by the shoe.

In Finland and elsewhere when deicing solution is not enough ot not practical, they just put the special shoes on when the freezing rain is coming and leave them on until it is no longer in the forecast and just budget appropriately for a faster catenary wire replacement schedule.

If freezing rain, as opposed to snow, is the problem, then someone may have to dig into the operating agreement to figure out who pays for increased operating costs due to climate change. My bet is that it would be the Region that pays.

The contract requires the trams to keep running up to an hourly accumulation rate of 12.7mm per hour or 25.4mm over every 2 hours. That an inch thick that GrandLinq/Keolis is required to have a solution that works, whether de-icing fluid or scraper shoes.

So climate change, per se, is not really in the picture as a worry, as nothing is said about the frequency of freezing rain events, just the accumulation rates of the ice during them.

In October and November, many motorists put on snow tires for winter driving and leave them on until March.  If we only put them on ahead of each storm, it would slow us down too.  But, the winter tires would be in much better shape because they were only used for a handful of days.

There's no reason whey they can't look at the weather reports and put the scraper shoes on at 4am before that trams go out for the day's service.