Full LRT service resumes for first time since Wednesday morning shutdown
R1 replacement bus service is ending
Full service on Ottawa's LRT Line 1 resumed Thursday evening for the first time since the system shut down Wednesday morning.
Service along the entire length of the Confederation Line resumed shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday, OC Transpo said in a tweet.
The section of track between uOttawa and Tremblay stations was the last to open. Service to the rest of the track, from Tremblay to Blair and from Tunney's Pasture to uOttawa, was restored as of about 3 p.m., according to a memo to council from general manager of transit services Renée Amilcar.
R1 bus service, which had been operating between St-Laurent and Rideau stations, ended Thursday evening.
Five trains on the Confederation Line came to a stop Wednesday morning. One stopped just east of Tunney's Pasture station, one stopped as it came into Rideau station, two stopped between Lees and Hurdman stations and one stopped just east of Tremblay station.
The decision was then made to shut down the entire system to prevent further damage to the infrastructure.
The memo said Rideau Transit Maintenance crews had removed ice buildup from the overhead wires, inspected and removed stopped trains from the lines and re-energized the system.
"Between Lees and Hurdman stations, RTM will inspect the overhead wires and will then recover the trains stopped on the line before restoring the remaining service," the memo said.
Timeline of problems
The first OC Transpo alert about a stopped train came at about 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday By 9:45 a.m., LRT had been shut down and replacement bus service was announced.
To reach stranded passengers on one stopped train between Lees and Hurdman stations, emergency responders had to cut a fence and escort passengers back to safety.
"We were stuck for more than 45 minutes," said Masood Sakhi, a daily OC Transpo rider who was going to work when his train stopped.
The stopped trains happened amid freezing rain across the region, and in spite of precautions that had been taken ahead of the storm to prevent ice from building up on the light-rail system's overhead wires, Amilcar wrote in a Wednesday memo to city council.
Those precautions included running all trains continuously overnight with winter carbons on 10 of them.
One problem, Amilcar said in a media briefing later Wednesday, may be that the trains are too sensitive to power surges. More investigation is necessary, she said.
Richard Holder, an engineer and rail manager with the city, said that after freezing rain caused a shutdown of Line 1 in January, a working group was formed to look at what could be done to prevent future issues with freezing rain and ice events.
Mario Guerra, CEO for Rideau Transit Maintenance, said the hope is to have longer-term fixes in place by next winter.