MONTREAL, Que. – Your train’s late? The culprits may be tiny bits of road salt and gravel.
The Agence métropolitaine de transport has spent millions of dollars on upgrades to avoid a replay of delays that plagued the Vaudreuil-Hudson commuter-train line during the winter of 2008-2009.
Among the improvements last year were heaters installed on about 40 railroad switches, the equipment that guides trains from one track to another at junctions. Until recently, those switches would freeze; trains would have to wait while workers used metal bars to hack at ice.
Now, heaters melt ice and snow on the switches.
Train delays are not as common as two winters ago.
But for the past two months, the AMT has continued to blame switching problems for late trains, including yesterday when a morning rush-hour train was delayed by 15 minutes.
One particular switch – at the Westminster Ave. railway crossing, near Sherbrooke St. W., in Montreal West – is the cause, but the delays have nothing to do with ice, said AMT spokesperson Martine Rouette.
That switch “is only 10 feet from the road and when trucks go by spreading salt and gravel, the abrasives get into the switch and block the mechanism,” she said.
When that happens, the tracks can’t be used until the obstruction is manually removed, either by AMT employees or workers from the Canadian Pacific, which owns the tracks, she added.
Rouette said there is no way to avoid occasional problems with the switch.
A blocked switch during rush hour can cause major bottlenecks on three lines.
Hardest hit is Vaudreuil-Hudson, the AMT’s second busiest line (15,000 people use it daily), but the Candiac line also uses the same tracks and switch.
“We have teams on the ground all the time and when snow is forecast we put more people out there,” Rouette said. “We’re working hard to be ready for every possible winter impact and to quickly deal with problems that can slow down our network.”
In addition to the switching challenges, the AMT has blamed recent delays on signalling problems, locomotive mechanical failures and CP Rail workers who showed up late because they were stuck in a snowstorm traffic jam.
In January 2009, during the worst of the AMT’s troubles, Vaudreuil-Hudson trains were on schedule only 76 per cent of the time.
In the first 10 months of 2010, the line was on schedule 95 per cent of the time, the AMT says. More recent figures were not available.
The AMT considers a train on time if it reaches its final destination within six minutes of the scheduled time.
In addition to adding heaters to switches, the AMT has purchased new train cars, is better preparing locomotives for winter, and is working on a system to alert commuters about late and cancelled trains via email, cellphones and screens on platforms.
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