TORONTO — A member of the Toronto Transit Commission and Toronto city council is questioning whether the transit agency performed sufficient maintenance on the Scarborough Rapid Transit line before a July 2023 derailment that led to the premature closing of the line, the CBC reports.
Council member Josh Matlow is raising his concerns based on an independent review onto the July 23, 2023, derailment that saw one car separate from the rest of the four-car RT trainset and derail, sending five people to the hospital with injuries [see “Five require treatment …,” Trains News Wire, July 24, 2023]. The Systra Canada report found reporting of defects of the reaction rail — which holds the power rail on the third-rail system in place — had dropped from an average of more than 126 per year between 2018 to 2021 to just 14 in 2022 and 16 in 2023. The TTC had voted in February 2021 to shut the line down as of November 2023 because of plans to eventually replace it with extension of a subway line [see “Briefs: Toronto transit board votes …,” News Wire, Feb. 11, 2021]. The TTC ended up not reopening the line after the derailment.
“This report is a canary in a coal mine,” Matlow told reporters, according to the CBC. “The TTC needs to re-earn the trust of Torontonians because this report says that there wasn’t the maintenance needed to ensure the [Scarborough line] would be safe and functional until its very last day.”
The Systra report is causing controversy not only because of its contents, but because of the way it was presented. Transit expert Steve Munro details in a blog post how it and other technical reports on the Scarborough derailment had been posted in November or December, but were extremely difficult to find; he happened across them while looking for information on the busway that has replaced the Scarborough rail line. Matlow says the report should have been brought to the TTC board as an agenda item.
Global News reports TTC CEO Rick Leary denied burying the report, saying the agency was seeking more information before bringing it to the board: “There were elements of the report we wanted to do more due diligence to, and that’s what we’re doing now, with the intent to come back in April.”
Leary also said the defect figures reflected a change in the way data was collected, according to the CBC. “We knew that we did not reduce maintenance,” he said. “That I can tell you was very true.”
The TTC’s investigation found loose or broken bolts in the power rail led to the derailment [see “Investigation finds flawed bolts …,” News Wire, Sept. 27, 2023]. Munro’s blog post says the various technical reports “identified issues [that] were not at the single derailment site, but common to other parts of the line and to TTC maintenance practices.”
It appears that most of the transit system in North America have maintenance problems.
Maintenance is not sexy. Many outfits do not assign best persons to that department. Good example is Amtrak that now has a what 2-year backlog?!