A decision on free transit rates expected in December next week, based on Ottawa – Ottawa LRT tests | The Canadian News

City of Ottawa staff are expected to make a call on whether there will be free transit service in December sometime next week as Rideau Transit Group begins testing trains on the light rail system for the first time in more. of one month.

RTG began testing trains on the Confederation Line for the first time since the September 19 derailment on Wednesday afternoon.

The trial period will check to see if the line is ready for a partial service relaunch, currently scheduled for early November.

Residents can expect to see trains running at different speeds or stopped on the line at various points while RTG runs the system at their own pace.

Ottawa’s independent rail safety advisor, TRA, will be on hand to oversee the trial period.

Ottawa City Manager Steve Kanellakos told reporters after the city council met on Wednesday that RTG was able to get a double train on the line “ahead of schedule,” making him “cautiously optimistic” of that the system will be ready to run seven trains plus one spare. in the first two weeks of November.

RTG also said earlier this week that it believes it can provide a full 15-train service by November 29, but Kanellakos warned in a memo that the city is aiming for mid-December to get all its safety approvals.

That could affect plans for a month of free rates in December, which the council approved a few weeks ago as a “gesture” for besieged transit users amid ongoing LRT downtime. The plan had the condition that it would only be carried out if the trains were to run again on the Confederation Line.

Kanellakos said Wednesday it is “evaluating” based on how well the next few days of testing are going whether the December free transit service will go ahead.

“We’re going to take a few more days to look at it, see how we progress the rest of the week with testing and over the weekend and then make a decision next week in terms of what we’re going to get done for December,” he said.

Also Wednesday, Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney served a motion seeking to get a judicial investigation into the LRT system back on the council’s agenda in two weeks.

The motion seeks an investigation that goes beyond the auditor general’s investigation previously approved by the city council, explicitly seeking public hearings and an examination of possible breaches of trust by current or former council members or staff during the original acquisition of the LRT system.

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