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In the last board meeting, it was made clear that as they uncover more issues with inspections, more RSZs (or ones currently in place) will appear (remain). Just because there is a RSZ, doesn't mean they haven't been fixing problems, but possibly uncovering more defects...
I'm not buying what they're selling. It's been months of having these restricted speed zones along the exact same sections of track, and they already conducted a mass swath of inspections on these stretches. I highly, highly doubt that they magically discovered more defects along the same stretches that were supposed to be lifted over the past 2 weeks.
That area near davisville has always had issues and the only real way to fix it is to dig up the whole track bed and redo it.
Inspections are done daily or weekly or monthly, depending on the type and what they are looking for.
If you haven't already, I recommend watching the board meeting where they discuss the RSZs (starting around the 46 minute mark).
I think the communication needs improvement here...From the TTCs point of view, they are removing RSZs, but are discovering more issues (and adding others) within the same large section of track - those sections are hundreds of metres long - which would appear as if they aren't doing anything or meeting their targets.
I'm not sure what you're proposing here, but I don't think removal of RSZs is appropriate. I think we aren't tolerating the nonsense of poor? track inspection and maintenance and hence the implementation of RSZs. Again, in the video, Fort talks about changes in inspection procedures (biannual track survey) that our current interim CEO supports.
But isn't the preventative maintenance plan intended to keep the track in a state of good repair? The fact that this is not happening means that there is something wrong with the way they maintain the track. One section here or there is acceptable but 25% of the whole system having issues is another thing. Maybe we need to do what Boston did and close the system for a week and fix all the problems.
One example of "other infrastructure to perform maintenance without impacting service" are express tracks as seen in NYC. Other systems (especially fully automated ones) can run limited service on one track, or use crossovers to bypass work areas - lots of Line 1 is in shared tunnel with the other track though.
The nature of which is such that sections of track (particularly outdoors) are prone to settlement which exceeds tolerance and necessitates track work and slow zones.
They have been the whole time. That's how railways work. There have been periodic slow orders on certain track sections fairly frequently going back as long as I can remember (especially the original outdoor sections between Bloor and Eglinton)
And has required regular maintenance that whole time, and more of it as it continues to age.
Yes. There are also weekend closures (affecting GO service) in which the necessary work is performed. But the TTC is running trains over its tracks every couple minutes for 20ish hours per day every day, while GO/CN/CP rails get more of a reprieve and thus don't wear the same way.
Workers, unionized or not, can only really perform the work they're given with the tools they're given. TTC management in recent years has placed less emphasis on maintenance (both in terms of standards and frequency) and allowed the work fleet to fall into disrepair—partly out of Leary's incompetence and laziness, partly due to working under multiple levels of government running austerity budgets—such that they can't perform the necessary work where it needs to be done when it needs to be done. Whether or not the people doing the work are unionized is entirely irrelevant in this case, because non-union workers would still be dealing with limited windows to perform work (either overnight or in the span of one weekend), limited equipment (as something like a quarter of the rail work fleet is out of service and god knows how many are barely hanging on and spilling oil all over the tracks), and a limited budget to actually deploy the number of workers required to perform the work TTC management has ultimately created for itself.
I think that's a bit simplistic. Maybe a better comparison is rubber tires on an asphalt road. Both of those are consumables, and can very quickly go from "okay" to "not okay" if the situation arises (think a pothole, or an a worn tire with the threads showing).
They were popping up for decades. Slow orders have always been around.
All of the time. The main advantage of the mainline railways, however, is that if their equipment bites the bullet that there are a number of other outfits that they can rent the required machinery, and usually within several hours notice.
I don't think that there is resource allocation problem per se. My understanding is that the track crews are working their proverbial asses off. They are getting a lot of overtime to fix all of the issues.
With what's being said, and from reading the reports and listening to the meeting, I'm genuinely curious if the fixes are being applied properly from the first time around when they are worked on. I have seen a quite a few cases this year where there is a slow zone that's rectified, only to be re-instituted just a few days later.
It depends on what the fix is.
And this is part of the problem. The issues with ties-in-ballast may go far deeper (both literally and metaphorically) than just the track itself. So fixing the problem only ends up being a short-term fix, and if the problems are particularly acute underneath the track structure than it can't be expected that the solution will last for very long at all.
There are LOTS of sections of King which have poor streetcar track - in particular, as shown here, where the concrete on the 'margins' between track and asphalt has deteriorated. The TTC is (too slowly) replacing all of the track on King. This year they did work around Strachan. In 2025 they plan to do:
