Subways

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Subway Hydraulic Fluid Spills – Investigative Report

The TTC has released the reports investigating the cause of the hydraulic fluid spills from subway work cars during the first half of 2024.

This report contains six sections:

PDF PagesContent
1-6Covering report from TTC management
7-13Attachment 1: Management action plan
14-56Attachment 2: Root Cause Assessment of Leaks by Hatch
57-99Acuren Group report: Failure Analysis Examination of a Hydraulic Hose
100-120Timeline of events on May 13, 2024
130-144APTA (American Public Transit Association) Peer Review of Incident Management

See also:

Introduction

The primary report among these is from Hatch, a consulting engineering firm with rail industry expertise. Their task, as they state clearly, was to determine the underlying technical reasons for each incident, but not to delve into TTC operational practices.

There are many cases cited of inadequate vehicle inspection and maintenance, lack of procedures and standards, undertrained staff, and poor record-keeping to document the history of affected vehicles. These are not isolated incidents, but ongoing problems.

The Management Action Plan consolidates all of the recommendations from Hatch and APTA together with their current status. Many are “complete” and others are “in progress”. What is clear from the extent of the list is that many problems, some quite serious, required action by the TTC. How did the system get into that state in the first place?

The TTC management report looks only at the hydraulic fluid spills, but does not consider the wider context of two previous reviews of maintenance and record keeping: the Streetcar Overhead Section, and the post-mortem report on the SRT derailment. There is a sense that “we have fixed this” through the substantial implementation of consultant recommendations, but without the broader context.

On a more general level, there are two obvious questions:

  • How many more sections or processes within the TTC suffer from similar issues, and are problems just waiting to surface?
  • Is the lower maintenance standard really confined only to work vehicles, or have staffing and funding limitations affected support for revenue vehicles and infrastructure too?

The management report states:

Both reports [Hatch and APTA] identified common root causes, and while they found that the TTC’s practices are typical of the industry, they recommend implementing a more robust preventative maintenance program of procedures, training, and quality control modeled after what the TTC has in place for revenue service vehicles. [Management report at p. 1]

The comment about TTC practices being “typical of the industry” is telling. If the situation described in the reports really is typical, the transit industry is in perilous condition. Saying “everybody else does it this way” does not explain how work car maintenance is nowhere near what one would expect from a once pre-eminent transit system in North America.

The Hatch report described the situation differently:

The lack of detailed documentation for the design and maintenance of the work car fleets is highlighted as a major issue in this report, especially for the repair of hydraulic hoses. However, Hatch’s experience with other major transit agencies in North America like TTC, suggest that design and maintenance documentation supplied by work car OEMs does not usually contain detailed information on the installation of the hydraulic hoses except when mandated by a procurement specification or used for very specific applications (e.g. rigid hoses, specialty hoses and fittings, and components that are hard to procure and/or have long lead times). [Hatch at p. 39]

That remark refers to the availability of documentation, not to day-to-day maintenance practices.

The APTA report is silent on practices at TTC compared to other systems.

This is a significant discrepancy between the management report and the documents from Hatch and APTA, and one cannot help seeing this as “spin” to put TTC practices in the best possible light.

Summary of Incidents

The table below gives an overview of the incidents reviewed by Hatch.

DateDescription
Sun Jan 14Car RT56 spilled 10L of fluid between Sherbourne and Donlands Stations.
Cause: Hydrostatic hose failure
Wed Jan 17Car RT17 spilled 120L of fluid between Eglinton West and Dupont Stations.
Cause: Filter O-ring failure
Sat Feb 10Car RT7 spilled 5L of fluid in Greenwood Yard during a pre-departure inspection.
Cause: A faulty hydraulic filter O-ring
Mon Apr 22Car RT41 spilled 50L of fluid while shunting into Greenwood wye north of the yard.
Cause: O-ring failure
Mon May 13Car RT56 spilled 100L to 140L of fluid at Spadina Station (Line 1) and other locations while it was being towed back to Greenwood Yard.
Cause: Abraded hose
Service effect: Line 2 was shut down for over 12 hours as the affected area was greatly expanded by moving a leaking car through the system rather than isolating it for inspection and repair.
Wed May 15Car RT84 spilled 200L of fluid on the trackbed north of Eglinton Station.
Cause: Excessively worn driveshaft clutch plates seized and disintegrated leading to further damage including a severed hose.
Thu May 16Car RT41 leaked 0.25L of fluid on the trackbed at Keele Station.
Cause: O-ring failure under a pressure sensor
Sun May 26Car RT18 leaked 30L of fluid onto open track between Victoria Park and Kennedy Stations.
Cause: Incorrect hose and fitting used in a previous repair cause a hose failure.

Some of these incidents were cleaned up before affecting revenue service, or occurred in yards where there would be no effect. This does not minimize the severity of so many failures in such a short time span. Some of the cleanup efforts required multiple passes to complete satisfactorily.

One outcome of this review is the recognition that clean-up of spills requires better handling than in the past, but the basic issue is that the spills should occur less frequently, if at all, in the first place.

Readers who want to see complete details and photographs of these incidents should peruse the Hatch report.

One key point should be knocked on its head: back in May, there were questions about possible sabotage given the spate of events in a two-week interval. The investigation showed that all incidents were due to component failure from lack of maintenance, or of incorrect maintenance. The May 13 incident was a direct result of the routing of a hose through a floor grate where it would chafe and eventually fail. “Sabotage” was a red herring at the time, and remains so today. [There is an extensive review of the metallurgical condition of the hose and the floor grate in the Acuren Group report.]

TTC plans to up its spending on work cars. It is worth noting that a plan to refresh and expand the work car fleet under former CEO Andy Byford was sidelined when Rick Leary took over as, initially, was the plan to renew the Line 2 fleet.

The TTC’s 2024-2033 Capital Budget and Plan includes $34.0 million of approved funding for work car overhauls and $63.4 million toward work car procurements.

TTC staff will include a funding request in its 2025 Operating Budget submission to establish a more robust work car preventative maintenance program.

This statement is a clear admission that the program now in place is inadequate. A related issue is that the backlog of necessary work is directly related to work car availability, and in turn that drives the longevity of slowdown orders on the subway.

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Subway Restricted Speed Zones

At its meeting of September 24, 2024, the TTC Board received a presentation from Fort Monaco, Chief Operations and Infrastructure Officer, on subway restricted speed zones (aka “RSZs”).

From the sheer number and duration of these, it has been clear to riders that the TTC fell behind both in the quality of its track maintenance, and in its ability to work through the backlog. It is one thing to say that RSZs are implemented for safety, but when they are so numerous, “safety” had become a matter of necessity beyond routine levels.

The current RSZ map, together with expected dates when these zones will be repaired, is from the appendix of the presentation deck. Monaco noted that with each RSZ adding about two minutes of travel time, the trip from Wilson to Union Station is extended by about 15 minutes.

The locations where these occur are overwhelmingly in “open cut” locations where rail is laid on ties and ballast. In tunnels, rail is either mounted directly on the concrete tunnel floor, or on structures which themself are fixed to the tunnel. Such track cannot shift around as much from forces of passing trains. Other track issues include several types of wear that can induce noise and rough train operation, but also fractures from metal fatigue.

Since January 2023 the accumulated count of RSZs is almost 300. Of these, only 30 were planned, typically for track renewal projects where a slow order is required over an extended period while work is in progress.

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TTC Board Meeting: July 17, 2024

The July 17 Board meeting was extraordinarily long thanks to three in camera items, plus extended discussions of the CEO’s Report and of use of buses as homeless shelters during the winter.

The confidential session dealt with:

  • A collective bargaining update for two small groups of customer service and operations supervisor employees.
  • An update on advice from External Counsel. On a recorded vote, this was adopted with all Board members except Councillor Saxe in favour. As of the publication of this article (July 28), there have been no leaks about the subject of this report.
  • An update on the fare modernization program including the status of the Presto contract. The report was also discussed briefly in the public session later in the meeting.

The public meeting included:

  • The July 16 storm, flooding and hardening of infrastructure against climate change.
  • New subway trains and federal funding announced earlier the same day (July 17).
  • Prioritization of State of Good Repair projects. This item received scant attention although the report contains much interesting background on capital plans.
  • Safety on the TTC.
  • Use of shelter buses.
  • Transit network expansion update.
  • Fare Compliance Action Plan: See the updated version of my previous article on this report which includes the debate at the Board meeting.

Not discussed was the issue of hydraulic fluid leaks from subway work cars of which one quarter are still out of service. A report is supposed to be coming to the Board soon. It is not clear how much this situation is affecting the TTC’s ability to stay on top of track maintenance issues and the growing list of slow orders for track that cannot be safely operated at full speed.

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New Trains for TTC’s Line 2 (Corrected)

Updated July 1 at 11:0 am:

  • The section on 2016 budgets has been corrected to show the then almost completed TR train delivery and the proposed T1 replacement project. These were conflated erroneously in the original text.
  • In the evolution of pricing for T1 replacement trains, I erroneously omitted a major change in cost estimates from a report in November 2023 which saw a roughly 50% jump in the cost of new trains. The text of the article has been modified accordingly with changes noted by text strikeouts and italics. My apologies for the error.

TTC’s need for a replacement Line 2 fleet has been known for many years. The “T1” cars were delivered between 1995 and 2001, and they will hit their 30-year design life through the latter 2020s. These cars are often talked of as if they will all be over the hill in 2026, but there actual range runs out to 2031. The important issue is to start deliveries of new cars so that the oldest and least reliable can be retired before they affect service.

Some of the T1s were originally used on Line 4 Sheppard, but they were displaced with the shift to Automatic Train Control on Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina. Sheppard trains run on ATC to reach Davisville Carhouse even though Line 4 itself is manually operated. This change added to the surplus T1 fleet.

When the Scarborough Subway Extension was expected to open in 2026, the extra cars would have provided initial service there, but this is no longer possible because they will age out of use before the line opens.

In the 2018 Capital Budget, presented in the last months of Andy Byford’s tenure as CEO, there are three related items:

  • Purchase of 372 new subway cars (2018 to post 2026)
  • New Subway Maintenance Facility (Property acquisition)
  • Line 2 resignalling (ATC)

The new subway MSF would be on property southwest of Kipling Station, the former CPR Obico Yard, and this has been purchased by the City. At the time, the Relief Line trains were expected to use Greenwood Yard and displace part of the Line 2 fleet, hence the need for a second yard. Moreover, if the new trains were in six-car units like the TRs on Line 1, Greenwood Shops would not be suitable as it was designed for two-car sets.

The clear intent was complete replacement of the T1 fleet starting with design and prototypes, then production deliveries roughly in line with the projected T1 retirement dates.

An “Ooops” In Funding Advocacy?

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: This section has been revised in light of the November 2023 report which used a much higher unit cost/train for the T1 replacements than all previous estimates. If there is an “ooops”, it lies in the use of a lower cost estimate for new trains for an extended period with a very recent jump that increased the unfunded portion of the project. The original estimate would now only cover the cost of replacement trains for Line 2 at its pre-pandemic level of service, but not any expansion/extension trains.

For many years, the plan for new trains required 62 trains (372 cars), a one-for-one replacement of the T1s, to re-equip Line 2 Bloor-Danforth and 18 trains to provide extra trains for service improvements on Line 1. Of the 62 trains on Line 2, 55 would provide the existing Kennedy-Kipling service, and 7 were headed for the Scarborough extension. In the most recent iteration, there are 55 trains for Line 2. The 7 SSE trains are combined with the 18 Line 1 trains to give 25 trains for unspecified future needs.

The full history is tracked later in the article.

Between the 2023 and 2024 budgets the project went from 80 trains for $2.487 billion in 2023 to 55 trains for $2.4-2.5 billion in 2024. Materials produced in support of the purchase and of lobbying efforts to gain federal funding are quite clear that only 55 trains are involved, not 80. This effectively raises the price per train by 50 per cent.

The following text is no longer appropriate, but has been left as a matter of record. Apologies for the error.

Conversely, if the real intent is to buy 80 trains, then pitching the needed subsidy as being only for the Line 2 trains misrepresents what is really happening. This would be an order both for the Bloor-Danforth line’s state of good repair and for accommodation of future extensions and growth.

The TTC has yet to produce updated demand projections for its subway system in a post-covid environment, and it is unclear how many trains will be required to address demand growth and expansion.

Meanwhile, a call for one third federal funding for a 55 train project at $758 million misrepresents the scope and purpose of the new trains. The scope of the planned TTC order is shown below, but with all of the cost allocated against Line 2.

However, elsewhere the plan describes the purpose of this investment as:

Purchase of new subway trains to replace the aging T1 trains, meet ATC requirements and align the fleet with ridership growth forecasts [p. 44 of the 2024 15-Year Capital Plan].

There is a fundamental discrepancy between the claimed need for and funding of new trains between 2023 and 2024 budgets. If the pricing for an 80-train order in years 2023 and before is correct, then the available City and Provincial funding would pay for the 55 Line 2 trains.

The Capital Plan and Shifting Priorities

The 15-Year Capital Plan landed with a thud when it was introduced as part of the 2019 budget. Unlike previous versions of capital plans, it included everything the TTC thought was necessary whether money was available to fund it or not. The price tag was a big shock, over three times the size of the conventional capital plan. This has since grown to four times as the appetite for capital projects goes up, but funding does not.

Transit priority decisions were a very expensive shell game involving the timing and cost of transit projects. Until Premier Ford uploaded four major expansion schemes (Ontario Line, formerly the Relief Line, Eglinton Crosstown, Scarborough and Yonge North) in 2020, there simply was not enough money on the table to pay the City’s share for everything. Also competing for funding were SmartTrack stations, Eglinton East LRT and Waterfront East LRT, not to mention additional streetcars for service expansion, and bus replacements and migration to an all-electric fleet.

The 2019 plan shifted the purchase of new subway cars to post-2028. In its place was a 10-year life extension program for the T1 fleet stretching it out into the 2030s. The scope of the Line 2 ATC project was also adjusted because the T1 fleet cannot be modified to run with ATC signalling.

This achieved a reduction in capital requirements in the short term, but gambled on the viability of the T1s and the old block signal system on Line 2 surviving reliably into the late 2030s. This scheme was short-lived, but it served a purpose of reducing the TTC’s apparent capital requirements to make room for other projects, notably John Tory’s SmartTrack.

Both the provincial and federal government made commitments to some projects based on political considerations and the then-stated priorities of Toronto Council. One casualty of the proposal to defer new trains for ten years was funding for that project. For a time, it went from a “must have” to a future need.

By 2020, the plan included a proposal to buy replacement trains in the 2026-2030 time frame depending on funding, and deleted the life extension program for the T1s.

Ontario signed on for its share of a new fleet. Add-on orders will furnish trains for the Scarborough and Yonge North extensions that will cost less than they would as small, free-standing buys.

Replacement of the Line 2 fleet cannot proceed as a single project. The signal system dates from the 1960s and uses old technology. This presents both a maintenance and reliability challenge for the TTC and limits the frequency of service to what is possible with conventional block signals. That design holds trains further apart than an automatic train control system using “moving” blocks that can allow trains to pull closer together based on their speed and fine-grained location of their positions. Although new trains can be manually operated with old signals (as occurred on Line 1 during its transition to ATC), new signals require new trains.

By 2021, the new yard at Kipling had been pushed beyond the capital plan’s 10-year horizon. The Relief Line would have used TTC subway cars, but was replaced by the Ontario Line. Metrolinx claimed, falsely, that the OL would use newer up-to-date technology than the TTC would have provided. (This was a case of contrasting a brand new line with the oldest of TTC subway vehicles, signalling and operations.)

Originally the pressure for the Kipling yard came from using part of Greenwood Yard for the Downtown Relief Line, but the Ontario Line has its own Maintenance and Storage Facility at Thorncliffe Park. Trains for the Scarborough extension can be fitted within existing yards and spare tracks, but any service increase beyond pre-covid levels will trigger the need for a western yard. (A separate northern yard is under study as part of the Line 1 extension to Richmond Hill.)

Greenwood Shops, like the B-D line, is 60 years old and in need of overhaul and upgrades. Part of the original plan for a Kipling facility was to free up space for this work at Greenwood by reducing demand on the yard and shop space. However, with the deferral of Kipling, the Greenwood upgrades will occur while the yard is stuffed with the existing fleet and working through the transition to new trains. This saves money on a new yard at the expense of operational complexity and probably a longer period for upgrades than would otherwise be needed.

Federal Funding for T1 Replacements

The federal government has not yet committed funds to the T1 replacement project. Their current proposal involves a permanent transit fund available country-wide beginning in 2026. Whether the Trudeau government will still be in office to make any payments from such a fund is in some doubt.

Transit systems, not just Toronto’s, would like to pre-book payments from this fund so that they will be sure of the case flow in a few years and can launch major projects such as the T1 replacement now. The feds have been silent on that request although the TTC claims that discussions are underway.

The Federal Permanent Transit Fund (PTF) is set to provide new funding in 2026. Early commitments of funding under the Permanent Transit Fund (PTF) are needed this year, by opening up the intake process for critical in flight projects such as new subway trains. This is a request being made by all major transit agencies1 (STM, TransLink), and the Canadian Urban Transit Association2. Even if federal funding does not flow before 2026, having a firm approval of funding to be allocated from the PTF program will allow the TTC to launch the procurement. [Backgrounder, p. 2]

Even assuming that the fund will exist when it is needed, booking projects against it has a downside in that money earmarked for the subway cars will not be available for other projects. There is also a basic problem that the fund is thought to be too small, but that is a separate matter depending on government priorities well beyond the next election.

Local priorities can have their own effect in misdirecting spending. The SmartTrack Stations program will build five additional GO stations (East Harbour, Liberty Village, Bloor-Lansdowne, St. Clair-Old Weston and Finch-Kennedy) at a total cost of $1.689 billion of which $585 million comes from the Federal government and $878 million from the City. This arrangement came into effect in April 2018, the period when the TTC downplayed the importance of new trains thereby making room for John Tory’s signature project. A few years later, priorities changed again, but the federal money was already committed to SmartTrack.

Toronto is using scarce transit funds, regardless of their source, paying over $300 million per station for what should be a GO Transit project.

Shifting priorities have delayed other projects and/or changed their scope, and federal money that might have been scooped if projects actually were underway sat on the table. Some of this is now rolled into the overall transit fund, and it will be up to Toronto to actually launch projects to use whatever has been allocated. Toronto will have to actually decide what it can afford within available funding rather than assuming other governments will always shell out, and that they will keep funding “commitments” alive while Council dithers about whose ward gets the next transit project.

Evolution of the Proposed Purchase

The replacement of the T1 fleet is a high priority for the City and TTC. Two documents in the Board’s June 2024 agenda covered this in some detail:

There is a major change between past year budget presentations on the subject of new trains and information in these reports.

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: This change was first reported in November 2023 when the estimated cost of new trains was substantially higher than in all previous reports:

The table below summarizes the information.

Updated July 1 at 11:00am: Estimated cost of 62 T1 replacement trains in 2016 added. Updated pricing from November 2023 added.

($ billion)T1 Replacement TrainsLine 1 Growth TrainsT1 Life ExtensionNew Trains (Total)
2016$1.737 (62)
2019$0.068 (*)$0.430$0.720
2020$2.270 (62) (**)$0.500 (18)$0.710
2021$1.742 (62)$0.501 (18)$2.243B (80)
2022$1.600 (62)$0.720 (18)$2.320 (80)
2023$1.718 (62)$0.769 (18)$2.487 (80)
2023 (Nov)$2.222 (55)$1.010 (25)$3.232 (80)
2024$2.4-2.5B (55)

Notes:

  • (*) T1 payment in shown in the 2019 budget is a downpayment that would be made at the start of the procurement contract.
  • (**) The value of the T1 replacement shown in 2020 is high because this assumes the contract would not start until much later in the decade, and includes inflation.

Two things have happened:

  • 7 of the 62 Line 2 T1 replacement trains have become Line 1 growth trains. These were originally trains for Scarborough, but responsibility for them has shifted to Metrolinx. However, the TTC has not reduced the total order size to compensate for this.
  • The background information on the replacement trains talks only of the 55 Line 2 trains, but uses the full $2.4-$2.5 billion cost reflecting the revised unit cost from the November 2023 report.

In fact about one third of the train order would be used for Line 1 growth, but the total dollar value is erroneously claimed to be only for the Line 2 trains. This is a deeply misleading presentation.

The remainder of this article looks at the history of the T1 fleet and the shifting plans for its replacement including the budget and fleet plans for Lines 1 and 2. For an extensive discussion of subway fleet history, see Transit Toronto’s site.

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Hydraulic Oil Spills on the Subway

Subway service on the central portion of Line 2 Bloor-Danforth was suspended for over 12 hours on Monday, May 13 due to a spill of hydraulic fluid on the tracks. The replacement bus service was swamped by the combination of subway demand and congestion on Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street. The situation was compounded by changing and incomplete information about the extent and potential duration of the problem.

This was initially described as a spill somewhere between Sherbourne and Castle Frank Stations with the impression that the directly affected area was small. In fact, the volume was large, 200L of hydraulic fluid, and the area ran from Spadina to Greenwood Yard (east of Donlands Station). Trains could not operate safely until the rails were cleaned and operators could brake with confidence that trains would actually stop correctly.

This was not the first such incident. At a TTC Board Meeting earlier in 2024, ATU Local 113 had raised the issue of operational safety after a similar, albeit smaller problem in January at Eglinton West Station. Following the May 13 spill, the ATU wrote to the TTC Board raising basic questions about the incident, and by implication how well-informed the Board actually was about ongoing issues with subway safety.

At the May 16 Board meeting, management gave an extensive presentation about hydraulic fluid leaks and the recent increase in the frequency of these events. It is not clear whether such a detailed presentation would have occurred without the ATU going directly to Board members. Management’s credibility and transparency have been open to question following a near-miss incident at Osgoode Station that went unreported to the Board for almost a year, as well as track and infrastructure problems including the SRT derailment, and the need for ongoing slow orders due to problems with subway track.

CEO Rick Leary has retained external consultants, Hatch LTK, to review these incidents, and there will be a peer review by APTA (American Public Transit Association).

A much broader concern is subway delays of various types and how they are handled. Some have external causes (passengers wandering at track level, for example), but some are “own goals” in the sense that they arise from operational or infrastructure issues that could have been prevented. Whatever the reason, all of them strain the subway’s ability to provide reliable service. This works directly against the drive to restore transit’s credibility and attract new and returning riders.

Far more is needed than free Wi-Fi here and a new kiosk there. Creature comforts are nice, but the service must be trustworthy. The TTC’s fundamental job is to move people. The lion’s share of delays might be due to external factors beyond the TTC’s control, but how they react to delays is key.

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TTC Board Meeting: April 11, 2024 (Part I)

The TTC Board met on April 11 with a long agenda. Among items of interest are:

  • CEO’s Report
  • * 2024 Asset Management Plan
  • Line 3 SRT Incident Investigation and Subway Track Continuous Improvement Initiatives
  • Procurement Authorization – Subway Track Rail Milling Services
  • * City Council Transmittal – CC15.1 Budget Implementation Including Property Tax Rates, User Fees and Related Matters
  • * Financial and Major Projects Update for the Year Ended December 31, 2023
  • * Easier Access Phase III – Project Status Update April 2024
  • Approval of Public Art Concepts for the Bay, Castle Frank, Christie, Donlands and Lansdowne Stations

I have already written about the SRT report, and here will discuss only the deputations and discussion at the Board meeting.

(*) Part II will review the Asset Management Plan, and Part III will cover updates on TTC finances, Major Projects and Easier Access.

A Draft Report on the TTC’s “Innovation and Sustainability Framework” was deferred to the May Board meeting, and I will comment on that when it reappears.

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Ten Questions About the SRT Derailment

Among the reports on the TTC Board agenda for April 11 is a recap of the SRT investigation. I have already written about shortcomings and contradictions in this report and will not belabour that here.

The fundamental question is whether management are being entirely transparent in their presentation. If there is someone on the Board bold enough to challenge them, here are a few key questions:

  1. Ten days before the derailment, a high reaction rail was reported at the site, but this was logged as a low priority problem. The misalignment, reported as 1/2 inch, is on a par with the normal clearance between the LIM motor under SRT cars and the reaction rail. What repairs, if any, were made to correct this problem, and were the bolts holding the reaction rail checked for their integrity?
  2. At the site, joins in both the reaction rail cap and the main reaction rail were at the same position. This weakens the structure because the two sections cannot reinforce each other against deflection by magnetic forces as trains pass. The sections are supposed to be staggered to prevent this type of failure. Why weren’t they, and how many other locations on the SRT shared the same problem?
  3. How recently installed were the bolts that failed at the derailment site?
  4. Consultant reports state that the manufacturer, Hilti, did not intend its anchors to be used in a situation where the bolts would flex under load as on the SRT. Why was this not reported to the Board in the September 2023 briefing?
  5. New bolts on the SRT were not those supplied by Hilti, but were substituted by the TTC. The replacement bolts were longer and they used a different thread profile than the originals. Were these approved by Hilti?
  6. What portions of the SRT were reviewed by the consultants, and did they find other defects similar to those at the derailment site?
  7. Have all the reports, either internal or produced by consultants, about the derailment been made public? If not, why not, and when will they be made available?
  8. TTC management claims that they did not reduce the level of maintenance on the SRT even though it was to close in fall 2023. However, the consultants point out that capital repairs (as opposed to routine inspections) were discontinued, and that only that type of work would have detected loose reaction rail bolts. How does TTC management reconcile these claims?
  9. At the September 2023 Board meeting, TTC staff stated that the consultant’s recommendations for work to inspect and restore the SRT to safe operation would take longer then the planned remaining life of the line. How can the need to do so much work be reconciled with claims of regular inspection and repair?
  10. Why were the consultant reports posted to the TTC’s website in November and December 2023 with no notice to the public nor to the Board?

The TTC would like to put the derailment behind them and focus on improvements going forward. However, one must ask how long the practices leading to the SRT crash were used, and whether shortfalls were the result of budgetary “efficiencies” rather than good engineering. By extension, what other parts of the TTC might be compromised, and what is needed to correct this situation.

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Revisionist SRT History at the TTC

On April 3, 2024, the advocacy group TTCriders submitted a request to the City of Toronto Auditor General for a review of TTC maintenance practices. This arose both from the July 2023 SRT derailment and other recent events on the subway including a broken switch and a flurry of slow orders.

Full disclosure: I was asked to review a draft of the TTCriders letter and suggested minor edits, but am not a party to their request.

Both in the staff presentation at the TTC’s September 26, 2023 Board Meeting and in comments responding to TTCriders, the TTC has been quite clear that it regards the root cause of the SRT derailment to be loose mounting bolts for the reaction rail. This does not tell the full story, especially in light of consultant reports that were published well after the September 26 meeting.

The published version of the Network Rail report is dated August 23. The Hatch report is Sept 28. Gannett-Fleming’s is Oct 12. Systra’s is Nov 30. For an extensive review of these, see my previous article:

A common thread in the consultant reports was that inspection and maintenance practices were inadequate, staff were not trained in the potential danger of defects that they discovered, and many staff were juniors who had not fully qualified as track inspectors. At the time, this was treated as a problem limited to the SRT. Recent events suggest that poor practices extend beyond to the rail network generally, and this is a more pervasive problem than originally reported.

The staff presentation in September was part of a larger review of the SRT replacement service, and the report title gives no hint that the derailment is part of this. Elsewhere in the same agenda, the CEO’s report celebrates the “Farewell to the SRT” event but makes no mention of the derailment reviews.

In the TTC’s review of these reports, presented in the April 11 Board meeting agenda, these suppositions are countered, although not entirely convincingly. It is fair to assume that most people will not be familiar with the detailed reports and will take the TTC’s rebuttal at face value. [The April 11 report is discussed later in this article.]

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said CEO Rick Leary ordered the external reports the night of the derailment to get answers on what happened while including links to the reports posted on the TTC website. He also said the matter was discussed at the Sept. 26 TTC board meeting.

“TTCriders was represented at this same meeting so presumably they heard the same information and are fully aware what the root cause was,” he wrote.

CityNews April 3, 2024

Certainly TTCriders and anyone else attending the September 26 meeting or playing the video later “heard the same information”. The problem lies in being “fully aware” of the root cause which was not the loose bolts, but the failure to detect and correct the problem, and more generally the state of inspection work and staff training. A related problem identified by the consultants was that previous repairs at the derailment site had created a weakness in the reaction rail which, combined with loose bolts, made the failure causing the derailment more likely.

The September presentation noted the difficulty of inspecting the reaction rail supports which required hands-and-knees posture to peer under the track in all manner of weather and lighting conditions. In practice, this level of inspection was rare because it was so difficult. Oddly enough, the Vancouver SkyTrain system uses a separate test, striking the support bolts with a tool, and listening for a dull “thud” instead of a clear “ping”. The “thud” indicates a loose bolt requiring closer inspection.

A common indication that there were problems is scuffing of the reaction rail. This was noted at several locations on the line. One does not have to peer under the track to see this early indicator of a developing problem. However, scuffing could also result from minor clearance problems with specific cars and this would not necessarily be interpreted as a location warranting detailed reaction rail review, especially if the marks had been seen repeatedly.

The most damning item is in the TTC’s own Maximo defect tracking system as reported by an inspection team two weeks before the derailment (July 9, 2023). The item highlighted below shows the reaction rail was “raised 1/2 inch on the approach end”. This was a defect serious enough to be visible without the usual difficulty of inspecting under the reaction rail. A related oddity is a two-week gap in reporting of any further problems leading up to the derailment.

In summarizing the investigation at the September meeting, TTC staff stated that the “immediate cause” of the derailment was the failed anchor bolts. Further, the consultants had recommended that if the SRT were to resume operation through November, then all of the newer bolts installed from 2016 onward should be tested and retrofitted as necessary. This work would have required “time well beyond the planned closure date”, and so the line remained closed. (See meeting recording.)

The estimated scope of this work implies a pervasive problem that was either undetected or whose potential severity was not understood, or worse ignored.

An important distinction here is that the term “immediate cause” has morphed into “root cause”. No matter the frequency of track inspections, the loose bolt problems would not be detected because they were not visible.

A further concern is the manner in which consultant reports were quietly posted on the TTC’s website with no announcement in November and December 2023. My coverage of them was the first that some TTC Board members I have spoken with knew about them.

The documents are posted under the Projects page for the future of Line 3 SRT replacement service, hardly a location one would look for technical info on the derailment. Three of the reports were posted in mid November and one in December. It is easy to verify that they were not there earlier by looking at Internet archives for the page on October 2 and December 7, 2023. The first three reports went up almost two months after the Board meeting, not “a few weeks” as expected. However, there was no media release about them nor were they brought to the Board’s attention.

At the September meeting, Councillor Matlow asked whether there could have been a reduction in maintenance or negligence due to the anticipated shutdown of the line. The Gannett-Fleming consultant replied that there were multiple possible causes for the bolts coming loose, but did not address the frequency of inspections.

Staff and consultants reiterated that inspections for problems of loose bolts were very difficult and they would generally not be spotted. It would not matter how often a walking inspection passed potentially defective reaction rail mounts because these were not visible. Indeed, there was an inspection on the morning of the derailment that found no issues.

The Network Rail consultant mentioned marks on the reaction rail surface in passing, but then talked about the impossibility of seeing bolt problems because they are under the reaction rail, and movement was seen only with a train passing. He also said that issues were being reported and fixed, but this is contradicted by the Maximo logs which show a reaction rail lifted 1/2 inch at the site two weeks before the derailment (see above).

One major problem with the Maximo records is that there is no explicit log of repairs made in response to problem reports. Moreover, the consultants noted that almost all issues were logged with a relatively low priority for repairs. I attempted to FOI the repair work orders. However, the TTC advised that the only record was that a defect report was closed, and that there was no information on the actual repair work. If true, this makes post-incident review of the nature of repairs, if any, impossible.

In September, Matlow asks whether there was an increase in maintenance on the aging system. Staff replied about the 2016 plan to replace the anchors which was well-intentioned, but as we know from the reports there were design and installation issues that eventually caused the failure.

Councillor Holyday pursued the anchor design issue. The replies mentioned that there were other locations with scuff marks but mostly from different causes. There was no mention of a problem, flagged by consultants, of repairs that created a weak spot due to cuts in both layers of the reaction rail at various points including the derailment site.

Matlow asked CEO Leary about how the TTC will prevent another accident, and Leary talked briefly about changes already underway and lessons learned. He then mentioned a planned November report, but this was the unfunded capital projects report, not a more detailed SRT report.

Leary pivoted to the Line 2 trains and signal system, and funding problems that could lead to shutdowns. He explicitly mentioned avoiding having old vehicles in service in the future. This ignored his original support for rebuilding Line 2 trains for a 40-year lifespan, and of keeping conventional signals because ATC would have been incompatible with these trains. Now he has changed his position.

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The Unhappy State of SRT Track

On July 24, 2023, at about 6:43 pm, a southbound SRT train derailed south of Ellesmere Station after snagging the reaction rail. This event lifted the rear truck of the car off of the track and also caused it to break away from the rest of the train.

The detailed investigation reports were quietly posted on the TTC’s website, and I wrote a summary of them at the end of January:

I filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the TTC at the beginning of 2024 for “track inspection reports and work orders” for the SRT between June 1 and August 31, 2023. The reason for the extended cutoff date was to pick up any inspections and repairs that took place after the derailment.

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Scarborough RT Busway Funded in Mayor’s Budget

On February 1, 2024, Mayor Olivia Chow announced her version of Toronto’s 2024 operating and capital budgets at Scarborough Town Centre Station. There are many parts to this budget, including a slight reduction in the proposed tax rate, but the location of the event was no accident.

After much hand-wringing, political gesturing and activism by would-be users, the uncertainty over the busway in the former Scarborough RT right-of-way is gone. Toronto will pay for the project, and the delaying tactic of waiting for provincial funding is over. The text below is from the Mayor’s proposed budget at pages 35-36.

This is a fairly common shuffle of funding allocations between projects, something that is relatively easy because:

  • the amounts involved are small on the scale of the overall capital budget,
  • some of the spending is beyond 2024, and
  • the primary source is a placeholder for future as-yet uncommitted work.

What is needed now is a sense of urgency by the TTC to make every possible change in their project timetable to get things moving now. This could include:

  • Identifying work that can proceed without the mini Environmental Assessment known as a “TPAP” that will consume six unexpected months. Obvious candidates for this are the removal of existing SRT infrastructure – track, power, lighting – and demolition work at Lawrence East Station so that buses can pass through the station.
  • Examining whether the project can be split into south and north stages with the Lawrence to Eglinton section opening first. This would give some of the busway’s benefit including direct access to Kennedy Station as early as possible.

A change in focus is needed from delay, a common tactic in the Tory era to sweep budget problems under the rug, to creating the most expeditious project plan.

Transit planning should be about ambition and what we can achieve, not endless excuses and the deadly words “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …”.