Community concern continues over ION LRT delays
Posted Mar 9, 2023 11:30:00 AM.
A verbal update was given to the Waterloo Region Planning and Works Committee regarding ION Light Rail Transit (LRT) on Tuesday.
With this winter being very wet and mild, the conditions have caused problems for the ION, leading to multiple delays. According to Region of Waterloo Commissioner of Transportation Services Mathieu Goetzke, snow removal has been coordinated relatively well, but freezing rain has been the big issue, and this winter season has seen 10 freezing rain events already.
“When the freezing rain arrives, it actually can build up very quickly. The 10 minutes between two trains is enough sometimes to have more than a millimetre or two of ice to build up on the catenary, and this is when it starts to be a bit risky.”
The region has a 30-year deal for $2 billion with GrandLinq, a consortium that was the successful bidder to design, build and operate the ION on behalf of the region. The region may own the system, but their role is to monitor its performance.
Keolis Canada is a multinational transportation company that is a partner of Grandlinq, and the General Manager on the Keolis end of things, Richard Dean, said that they meet all performance targets but they can't maintain that standard in freezing rain conditions.
Dean added that winters aren't expected to get colder in the future.
“We can see that in the long-term, these [freezing rain] events are probably going to increase, so we got to look at what we can do from an engineering perspective and an operating perspective.”
Despite continued service disruptions, Dean believes that his team has the merit to be able to resolve or at the very least, minimize the issues.
“They're incredibly dedicated, incredibly hard-working, and they want to do a good job,” said Dean. “What we need to do is to improve our system and processes. We need to learn from these events and build them into the process, so by the next time around, we're better.”
