ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bytor]

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

I think in some cases the stuck vehicles was likely due to snow bank created by plow operators. Though in one of the cases, the unit stuck at Market Station, it was southbound, and there was very deep snow in front of it, but not from the a plow.

So I am guessing I saw these trains just after they started running again, and it doesn't look like that the tracks were cleared, at all.

I was talking to someone that works in transit in the USA, and his thought that our trains are too low to the ground, and that was most likely the issue.

Rail vehicles can handle snow more easily, but there still is "too much". We have low-floor trams, so that will affect what the "too much" level is compared to the videos of diesel plow locomotives ramming through 4m of snow at full speed. (They are awesome, BTW, go find them on youtube if you've never seen it.) In many regular (for here) snowfall scenarios, the much smaller amount that plows would deposit on the tracks is not normally a problem

In any case, Kitchener snowplowing plans should have included a "Heavy Snowfall Plan" version where something different is done for places like the Ottawa St. section with tracks on the one side. Such as having a regular snowplow only do the one side, and have the other side done by a tractor+blower & dump truck combo like what is used in DTK.

To not have had plans around to cover scenarios like this that, while not common, wil still happen multiple time sin the life of any given person, is incompetence. To put it bluntly.