Finch West LRT using electric switch heaters Ottawa LRT inquiry warned against

Toronto’s struggling Finch West LRT appears to be using a similar switch technology to the one that crippled Ottawa’s light rail system when it first launched, something a public inquiry warned other transit systems not to adopt.

Since opening at the beginning of a particularly cold Toronto winter, the Finch West LRT has been beset by delays and service disruptions regularly tied to problems with the switch technology embedded in the new transit line.

Switches are needed on light rail systems for trains to change direction. In harsh Canadian winters, they can become clogged with ice and snow, which needs to be melted for them to operate and for the trains to run.

The Toronto system, like Ottawa before it, is using electric heaters to melt ice and snow stuck in its switching systems. The technology proved so problematic in Ottawa it had to be replaced.

In Ottawa, the electric heaters were a regular problem, which a public inquiry said were responsible for “numerous issues on the line” when it opened.

According to the inquiry, the decision to eventually replace those heaters with gas showed that gas was “more effective at heating the switches and preventing ice and snow build-up.”

The inquiry noted that, if Ottawa had been “more aggressive in the selection of switch heaters,” it would have “mitigated a lot of the winter issues in advance.”

Despite the trouble in Ottawa and the findings of its inquiries, Finch launched with electric heaters, which appear to be part of its ongoing delays.

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Ontario Liberal MPP Stephen Blais, who previously sat on Ottawa city council, accused the Ford government of failing to learn the lessons of its own public inquiry.

“The lead on Finch West, certainly the head of Metrolinx, the transportation minister should have been fully aware, and I would say have in-depth knowledge of the report and the response to ensure those problems were not duplicated,” he told Global News.

“Especially with the electric heaters because it was such a small piece of technology that created an enormous problem on the system and delays on the system.”

Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay, however, insists the Finch West LRT is a different case than Ottawa. He said the way it has been designed to run along the busy road makes gas heaters impractical.

“Perfecting the use of heaters, along with the deployment of wayside staff to manually clear ice and snow is something which we continue to work and focus on,” Lindsay wrote in a recent social media post.

“Line 6 has a particular version of this challenge, because it interfaces with pedestrians and vehicles differently — running as it does in the centre of Finch on predominantly embedded rails. This makes it unsuitable for the natural gas heaters, which are present on some other transit lines.”

A spokesperson for the Minister of Transportation agreed, saying Finch West’s embedded track — rather than Ottawa’s grade-separated system — makes “natural-gas flame or hot-air switch heaters unsuitable.”

It’s unclear whether the Finch West LRT, which signed its construction contract in 2018, could have made changes to accommodate different heating technology.

Jonathan English, principal at Infrastory Insights, said technological standards and changes take time to come into effect, likely meaning they wouldn’t have been ready for Finch West’s designers or builders to pivot.

“My suspicion is a lot of these designs have been done a long time ago and certain things don’t necessarily get updated right away based on new information when the designs have been set,” he said.

“To some extent, every new project is going to have its challenges. However, this isn’t our first project. We should learn lessons from all of the projects that we’ve done so far. And its unfortunate if we are, in fact, repeating mistakes.”

The latest outage for the Finch West LRT came on Monday, with commuters forced onto buses after a surge in the electrical power for the switch heater blew a fuse.

A spokesperson for the Toronto Transit Commission said the company contracted to build and maintain the route was still looking into how to prevent the issue.

“Mosaic is continuing to assess the root cause and are working to implement additional preventive measures to reduce the likelihood of similar issues in the future,” they said.

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