Ottawa commuters frustrated again by partial LRT shutdown

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On an early morning at the Tunney’s Pasture LRT station, there’s little to be heard besides the sound of dress shoes slapping against pavement as commuters frantically dash to catch buses headed to downtown Ottawa.

Then there’s Annie Gingras, who briefly pauses mid-stride to explain to a group of tourists that the train isn’t running.

The LRT is shut down between Tunney’s Pasture and Rideau Station for two weeks for both regular summer maintenance and follow-up work to seal leaks in a downtown section of the tunnel. During the shutdown, R1 buses are running to replace the train between Tunney’s and Hurdman stations, the western-most section of the Confederation Line.

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Gingras, a consultant, is heading downtown for an early-morning meeting. She rushes towards an R1 bus before realizing it’s already full.

“It’s just funny, sitting here,” she says before rattling off a list of LRT woes over the past five years.

“My poor kid doesn’t want to use it; he’s scared of being late for school. Especially on exam days, he’s like, ‘Mom, can you get me there?’”

On the crowded platform, Kaitlyn Bertin, a volunteer with the Ottawa Food Bank, says she’ll likely be late for her shift, describing her morning commute as “a disaster.”

Bertin typically takes the train from Tunney’s to Hurdman Station, then a bus to the food bank, but now, “there’s just too many people,” and the replacement bus fills almost immediately. Usually Bertin waits for a bus with open seats, but, if she’s desperate for time, she’ll shimmy her way onto a packed bus anyway.

“I always tell my boss the day before that I’m coming in late,” she says. Fortunately, he’s understanding.

Maria Lima, a summer student with the federal government, says her trip home can take up to two hours while the train is shut down. She commutes to downtown from the Carleton Heights area.

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“It’s a terrible mess,” she said.

Lima suggested OC Transpo could try arranging the necessary track maintenance for weekends to keep the weekday commutes running smoothly.

“Either way, it will suck, but I think it will suck less if we do it on the weekend,” Lima said.

Pavel Kay’s commute from Tunney’s Pasture to the Parliament Hill area typically takes between five and seven minutes when the train is running. But, with the replacement buses, it can take as long as half an hour.

The city, he says, has not provided an alternative option “at the same level as the trains,” noting summertime construction and road closures are partially to blame for his extended commute, with the buses simply “not a direct equivalent” to the train.

He humbly says he’s not any smarter than city staffers, but believes “they could have planned it differently,” with different bus routes or more buses running.

A late-afternoon statement from the City of Ottawa’s Transit Services Department acknowledged that the partial shutdown of Line 1 service was “frustrating” for customers and added the network was “being carefully monitored in real time by our Transit Operations Control Centre.”

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Attributed to Katrina Camposarcone-Stubbs, the department’s public information officer, the release also said Transit Services was monitoring the performance of R1 bus replacement service and E1 shuttle express buses between Blair and Lyon Stations.

While acknowledging that R1 bus service “will never be able to completely replace the frequency, efficiency, and convenience of Line 1,” the statement said steps to be taken immediately would include:

• Additional on-street supervisors at key transfer stations;
• Additional bus trips to increase capacity during busier morning and afternoon travel periods;
• More signage.

“Staff will continue to monitor and adjust R1 and E1 service based on customer and staff feedback during the planned maintenance period,” the statement added.

Glen Gower, city councillor and chair of the city’s transit commission, says he hasn’t heard as many complaints from riders this year as he did last year during an unexpected, weeks-long LRT shutdown.

“A two-week maintenance window for an LRT is not unusual,” Gower said Wednesday. “But, in the context of Ottawa, where we’ve had so much unplanned downtime, I can understand why people are impatient, feeling inconvenienced.”

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With every planned or unplanned outage when replacement buses are required, OC Transpo is “always refining the plan, so the experience should be a little bit better, a little bit better, with every year as it happens,” Gower said.

Maintenance is planned for the eastern section of the Confederation Line between Hurdman and Blair stations this fall, Gower said, and OC Transpo and Rideau Transit Group will try to focus the work on evenings and weekends “so we don’t lose rush-hour services.”

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