City report does not include possible opening date for Trillium Line LRT, but offers timeline clues

A report prepared for a joint meeting of the Transit Commission and the LRT Subcommittee on May 31 does not contain any reference to an opening date for the delayed north-south Trillium Line, but it does offer clues into how much longer work could take.

A report prepared for a joint meeting of the Transit Commission and the LRT Subcommittee on May 31 does not contain any reference to an opening date for the delayed north-south Trillium Line, but it does offer clues into how much longer work could take.

The LRT line that runs from Bayview Station in the north to Limebank Station in the south, with a spur to the Ottawa Airport, was originally supposed to open in August of 2022. It has been delayed several times since then and OC Transpo officials have been hesitant to commit to any firm date when riders could expect to be on board the trains. The most recent indication of when the line might open for riders pushes the date into September at the latest, though officials would not say one way or the other whether a September opening could be achieved.

According to a report prepared for the May 31 meeting, some of the work that still needs to be done isn't scheduled to be completed until the end of June. Final signal and train control testing, communication systems testing, and final integration between the Transit Operations Control Centre and the field devices is expected to be largely complete between now and the end of June. Training is expected to be complete in early June and occupancy certificates for all stations are expected before the end of June. Final fire system testing, testing of the countdown passenger information messages on the station displays, and some residual integration tests are remaining.

Once the training is complete, the next major step is to effectively simulate regular service on the line, increasing the hours trains are running to what they would be once passengers are able to board. This is meant to ensure operators can safety run the system during normal hours but also to make sure the maintenance team can do its work during the shorter overnight windows between each service day.

This is expected to last eight to ten weeks, meaning it could continue well into August.

"Ideally, the system will be operated at the final service plan levels for a period of eight to ten weeks prior to opening to the public. Within this period, a decision will be made to start Trial Running once it has been clearly demonstrated all prerequisites have been met, that the operations and maintenance teams can deliver the required service levels and that the integrated system meets the reliability and performance objectives," the report says.

Trial running is a 21-day period of testing that is required before TransitNEXT — the SNC-Lavalin subsidiary building the line — can hand the system over to the city to open to the public. This is broken down into two parts, a 14-day service reliability test and a seven-day "failure scenario management" period. Before trial running can begin, several criteria must be met: