"They're just waiting for the blood work to come back." Who pays for the fix? "Based on their experience and everything they've seen, they have a very good idea of what the problem is now," he said, further extending the city's medical analogy. Holder said the root cause analysis of the 2021 derailment should be released within the next few months, but teams are working on recommendations from the Transportation Safety Board and the National Research Council, which RTG hired to look into it. LRT inquiry commissioner still concerned about wheel and track problems.Axle bearings on Ottawa LRT might need to be redesigned.The city has also looked at potential track issues, adjusting restraining rails built to prevent derailments and adding lubrication to the top of the rails around the tightest curves. "If you're coming into a corner with a train that's way heavier than it should be, that first rail that comes into the corner," Dumond said, "you can imagine that you're putting almost all of that extra load onto that one wheel." Strengthening it by using better materials - as RTG and Alstom appear ready to do with their new axle hub assemblies - will allow the system to withstand more force.Īnother issue raised in the LRT inquiry was the side-to-side force exerted on the wheel bearings as a train pushes around corners at high speed. While Dumond has no access to specific data, he said redesigning the wheel hub assembly makes sense. It's like a twist tie being bent and straightened over and over until it eventually breaks, Dumond explained. He says tests to ensure the safety of the LRT are ongoing. Richard Holder is the City of Ottawa's director of engineering services. "They should last 1.2 million kilometres," he said. "That would be years of use for the trains, and they're failing much before that." Glen Gower, chair of the transit commission, told CBC the wheels are clearly not built to meet the requirements of the system and are wearing out sooner than they should. Now the city, RTG and Alstom are working to understand the "disease," or system problems that are allowing these problems to continue. The city has already finished inspecting the majority of its fleet for signs of additional wear on train bearings, or what general manager of transit services Renée Amilcar called a "symptom." The city also introduced a timeline for restarting rail service, saying trains will be ready at the end of July, at the earliest.īut none of these steps come with a straightforward response to the question people have been asking for years: What caused a bearing to become loose enough to allow a wheel to break off its axle? Engineers still diagnosing issue Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says the new part will bring Ottawa closer to getting the rail system it deserves.
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