OTTAWA -- New Year's Eve revellers depending on the Confederation Line may have been late to their respective celebrations last night.
A memo sent out by the city details two separate occurrences where trains lost power shortly after free service began at 5pm.
The first occurred at Cyrville Station at 5:02pm. The city says end to end service continued despite the loss of power, but the train was not removed from the line and taken into maintenance until 6:51pm.
The city reports a second train lost power just west of UOttawa Station at 5:53pm. Following this breakdown, the transit operations control center began R1 replacement bus service. While the train was out of service at UOttawa Station, the line was split into two loops; one from Tunney's to Parliament Stations and another from Blair to Hurdman Stations with the R1 service running between Parliament and Hurdman Stations.
“It was chaos; people looking for a bus and not knowing where to go.” Dan Van Vliet was one transit rider who had to get on a bus at Hurdman station. He says it was confusing. “The red vest people didn’t know what was going on, so there were a few crowded R1 buses heading downtown.”
The train at UOttawa Station was not removed until 11:50pm. Full service to the Confederation Line resumed three minutes later.
Justin Kelly has been tracking LRT delays for months, using the Occasional Transport account. “I’m just going to roll it into we started the New Year with an LRT fail”
“The LRT is dying all the time now. It can’t be ignored it can’t be blamed on icy roads.” Kelly says the six hour delay is one of the longest delays so far. All these people dying waiting for an hour in the freezing cold, you can’t just slide that away.”
OC Transpo tweeted that they regret the inconvenience.
