As the O-Train South Extension completes its testing trial and prepares to open to the public, residents in Ottawa’s Little Italy neighbourhood are scrambling for answers to a disruptive and very loud issue with the train.
Hannah Dean is a resident in Little Italy and lives on Railway Street, and her home is right across the street from the O-Train track. Her fiance, Tyler Chapman, purchased their home for its central location, easy access to the Arboretum and the O-Train, and quiet and peaceful neighbourhood.
But since the testing for the extension began, a loud screeching noise, accompanied by a thumping sound, echoes through the neighbourhood every time the train passes — that’s every few minutes between the approximate hours of 5 a.m. and midnight.
The culprit is a device at the split in the track, called a frog, which was fitted to the previous trains but not for the new ones. It’s a piece of rail infrastructure that allows a cross-over, and in this instance, the frog was re-used from previous rails.
The result is a “kerchunk” sound as the train rocks back and forth, and a “screech” as it scrapes on the rail.
“(Tyler) purchased this home knowing that there would be easy access to public transit, which we’re fully in support of and want to use. But not at the detriment to our quality of life,” Dean told Ottawa Compass. “I’m so disappointed, because here’s this amazing opportunity for the city to have a good (train system), but then here are these good, tax-paying citizens who are being left behind and dealing with this thing.”
Dean and Chapman first reached out to Jeff Lieper, the councillor for their ward, during the summer when the testing first began. Dean says they were told the contract between the City and the developer, TransitNEXT, allows for the use of the old frog and does not require a replacement.
During the construction of the rail, the other frogs along the track were replaced to fit the new trains. According to the City of Ottawa, the noise is within acceptable limits.
Dean has been organizing with local residents to sign petitions and appeal to city councillors and staff for a solution. In the meantime, their sleep, quality of life and wellbeing have been impacted in their homes. On a warm autumn day, with the windows open to let in a breeze, the noise echoes through Dean and Chapman’s home when the train passes.
“It’s not fair. This neighbourhood is quiet. We’ve got birds, there are a lot of families, but we have neighbours that moved. They sold their home because of this,” said Dean. “They stayed in the neighbourhood. They were able to move four streets over, but they have three young children, and they couldn’t have a baby around this noise.”
The city installed noise monitors on the track and has said they are continuing to collect data on the situation, but the solution requires certain weather conditions. And as winter approaches, those conditions become further from reach.
“As part of our ongoing procurement efforts, we are working to secure a contractor that specializes in frog retrofit work,” Katrina Camposarcone-Stubbs, public information officer at the City of Ottawa, told Ottawa Compass. “Once this is complete, the trackwork ideally needs to take place in temperatures of at least 10 degrees Celsius or warmer, though provisions can be made for colder temperatures.
“A timeline will be confirmed once a specialized contractor has been secured.” The City did not respond to questions about the parameters of the contract with TransitNext, and whether the current frog meets those standards.
In late October, Lieper told Ottawa Compass that he was hopeful the situation would be remedied “within a couple of weeks.”
He’s been aware of the noise since July, but was not previously notified that the frog was going to be reused.
“That is a level of detail that would never cross the city councillor’s desk. This is a public-private partnership, so my relationship with the builder is through the city,” he said. “I don’t have a direct relationship, and that’s deliberate, set out to the project agreement.
“I don’t know why they reused this particular piece of infrastructure,” Lieper continued. “They’re allowed to, and those could be decisions that would have been made by the builder.”
Dean and Chapman both work for the federal government, and Dean said taking virtual meetings on days she works from home has proven difficult. Most days, the sound wakes her up before 6 a.m., and neighbours have also had difficulty selling their homes, she said, because the train would go past during house showings.
“I can’t have fresh air in my home because I have to keep the windows closed. We have to sleep with a white noise machine and have to crank the white noise machine to a decibel in your room that almost bothers your sleep just to drown out that sound,” she said.
In a memo sent on Monday, Renée Amilcar, general manager of the transit services department at the City of Ottawa, said the O-Train is now entering winter preparation. The memo did not mention the frog.
As the window for re-configuring the frog this year closes, Dean said she and some neighbours are now “exploring legal options for solutions.”
“When we live in the centre of the city, there’s a lot of noise. But this was a preventable noise that the city didn’t accommodate for when they were doing their design,” Dean continued. “Nothing has ever like been done about it, and I’ve got emails going back to May, with people in the neighbourhood really raising this concern, and…Nothing.”
