[cplchanb]

Go tracker says theres a police investigation on the stoufville line. Train is an hour late.
Anyone know what happened? Mischief on board?

 

[PShells]

Go tracker says theres a police investigation on the stoufville line. Train is an hour late.
Anyone know what happened? Mischief on board?

Reddit posts suggests someone died on the tracks near the Bathurst bridge.

 

[Mitchell01]

I posted this on the reddit thread but will also post it here so as to better inform more people about how internal operational matters are dealt with over at Alstom


Re: Disciplinary Standards and Government Accountability.

Discipline is generally not disclosed since the crews work for a private company; Alstom, and not a government agency, it is legally considered a privacy matter. But as a former engineer I can say one thing for sure: disciplinary standards on the railway are extremely strict. For starters, crews are effectively treated as guilty right from the outset of an incident. And they are continously viewed as such throughout the investigative process and are presented in that light to the entire workforce.

There's two things I want to share in reply to this from an adjacent perspective.

First, everything is designed to be your fault.

The corporate culture with Metrolinx (and it's major contractors) is to assign blame to the employees without any possibility of fault themselves. There is never any question of conflicting goals that result in incidents. There's never any question of pressure being put on employees resulting in incidents. There's never any question of poor planning resulting in incidents. The fault is always blamed on individual employees for not doing their job correctly, for not following the rules or polices. Over the years I've seen plenty of safety investigations result in a very simplistic view of causation. Why did the employee slip? Because they were rushing. Because they didn't correctly identify hazards. It's never the fault of anyone else. It's never the fault of Metrolinx and their requirements which place limits on their workers causing them to rush.

Everything you could possibly do has a rule associated with it. Even though those rules are illogical or impossible to follow they are still on paper. Employees don't run through switches with machinery because they want to destroy them and get removed from service. They run through switches because their attention and focus was on other matters instead of the rules governing operating over switches. Yet everytime it happens, Metrolinx acts like it was an intentional act and personal slight against everyone who works there, when in reality, they didn't check the points because it's 0445 and they could only get on track at 0330 because the RTC didn't pick up the radio. They need to finish their work and they have 15 minutes to get off track because the first train is leaving the yard soon.

Conflicting goals are placed on all operational staff. You have the goal of keeping trains running on time. The goal of acting safely. The goal of following the rules. The goal of keeping costs down. All of these goals conflict one way or another. It's impossible to follow every goal at the same time. Corners are cut, that's the reality. To truly believe that zero incidents are possible would mean to fundamentally understand those conflicting goals.

That leads into my second part. Why Metrolinx is rotten.

I've been confounded for many years why Metrolinx has so many issues. After talking with some people I've come to the realization that the issues Metrolinx faces are systemic and rooted in fact that the organization and all of it's contractors are made up of two groups of people.

Railroaders and Non-Railroaders.

The vast majority of people who are involved with Metrolinx as employees or contractors are non-railroaders. Office staff, most of the executive level, customer service, the backend businesses people. They may even work for GO Transit, but they're not doing railroad jobs. Even people who may work in the corridor but don't work rail-specific jobs would be considered non-railroaders, like civil construction that isn't building specific rail infrastructure.

The small minority of people who are involved with Metrolinx are the actual railroaders. The people who do rail-specific jobs. Your train operators, corridor maintenance, corridor construction, fleet mechanics and electricians, flagging. Not just employees, but most of the management of those people would be railroaders too. They would be the people who would tell others that they "work for the railway". This isn't meant to be a competition between one group or the other or to put one group down, each group is important with what they do for the organization. But in essence you wouldn't trust your railroaders to manage the business just like how you wouldn't trust the office staff to operate the trains.

Metrolinx has become so bloated with non-railroaders that they completely dominate the workforce. Departments that should be managed by railroaders are being managed by people who have never set foot in the corridor. Major construction projects are being built by companies with barely any heavy rail experience, with oversight only by non-railroaders. Polices are developed by lawyers that are impossible to follow by the actual railroaders, resulting in informal carve outs to get the job done. One of the biggest issues is how compliance is handled. Compliance at Metrolinx is handled both by railroader and non-railroaders staff. Compliance is pushed aside to keep trains running on time. Only enforced when there is no possibility of affecting on time performance and of course the budget. Violations that get people suspended will result in a slap on the wrist or even no punishment if it gets discovered at an inconvenient time for revenue train service. (It's a conflicting goal of following the rules and keeping trains running on time.)

I wish I could say I know how to fix this mess. I wish I could end this by saying it's getting better. It's not.

 

[smallspy]

First off, all-in-all this was an excellent post.

But I do want to point out this particular passage:

Conflicting goals are placed on all operational staff. You have the goal of keeping trains running on time. The goal of acting safely. The goal of following the rules. The goal of keeping costs down. All of these goals conflict one way or another. It's impossible to follow every goal at the same time. Corners are cut, that's the reality. To truly believe that zero incidents are possible would mean to fundamentally understand those conflicting goals.

It's not just operational staff. A lot of the staff supporting them - and especially in your case, the guys in charge of track blocks for example - are dealing with the same issues as you. They are getting increasing pressure from their managers to minimize delays, to ensure that tracks are clear, to make sure that projects have enough resources to push them through, that flagmen and rented equipment aren't getting wasted, so that safety sometimes feels like it is an afterthought.

There needs to be a wholesale culture change at Metrolinx. One that does away from the finger pointing, the blame shifting, and the ass kissing. And to be honest, with everything that is going on around the network, maybe a return to railroaders railroading isn't the answer, either. Maybe it's time to properly split GO from Metrolinx. Let the operational side of the organization focus on its operations, while the planning and constructing sides do their thing.

Dan

 

[Northern Light]

The discussion in the last two pages strikes me as something worthy of @atakagi1 's attention.

Andy, the first post I would highlight is here:

GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

https://archive.is/N3j7a I posted this on the reddit thread but will also post it here so as to better inform more people about how internal operational matters are dealt with over at Alstom Re: Disciplinary Standards and Government Accountability. Discipline is generally not disclosed since...

urbantoronto.ca

Then just up page,

Here:

GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

Go tracker says theres a police investigation on the stoufville line. Train is an hour late. Anyone know what happened? Mischief on board?

urbantoronto.ca

And then Dan's post immediately above this one.

To Andy: these collectively speak to policy, procedure and cultures within Metrolinx, and (indirectly) related back to the close call discussed recently.

To the posters in question, some of you will know Andy, others will not; he is a reporter with The Star. He has put out some great investigative work, specifically on Mx.

You may not all be comfortable going on the record etc. But I would encourage you to talk to Andy if feasible. These problems need as much sunlight on them as can be shone.

If you feel you can't, I still thank you for bringing these matters as much attention as you can.

 

[nfitz]

I wish I could say I know how to fix this mess. I wish I could end this by saying it's getting better. It's not.

I'd guess the only thing that might lead to the necessary culture change is a mass casualty event.

In a functional organization, the recent switch miss should lead to that. But clearly that's not Metrolinx.

Not that this is unique to Metrolinx; recall CN's reluctance to fix stuff after the Hinton collision, and their vengeance on consultants who did.