Light rail switch heater issue being solved using Ottawa design originally passed over

An Ottawa-based company is watching its switch heaters being installed on the city's O-Train system, two years after its bid for the original construction project was dismissed.

Switch heaters allow trains to switch tracks easily during cold weather months.

President of Hovey Industries Marco Campagna says the switch heaters they were building use natural gas or propane and the city wanted electric, but winters in the capital have proven not kind to the electric heaters installed along the Confederation Line, causing the city to look for an alternative.

Campagna says he'd never seen anything like the original procurement process for the light rail project.

“We weren't allowed to see the specification to understand what we were bidding to,” he explains. “And then we found out later in the process — not from [Rideau Transit Group], but from one of the sub-contractors — that we didn't even qualify to bid because the technology they were originally specifying didn't include what we make. So we had to, sort of, scratch and claw our way into the process.”

Campagna says the city ultimately took the word 'electric' out of the bidding process, but his company was still overlooked even though it provided switch heaters on the original north-south O-Train line and in Ottawa's Belfast Yards.

“Our units have been on pretty much every transit system in Canada — Calgary transit, Edmonton, very proud to go into Union Station [in Toronto] and see Hovey products in there.”

Campagna tells CityNews' The Rob Snow Show, the company that installed the electric switch heaters is actually very good, it's just that the decision by the City of Ottawa wasn't.

“I can't tell you whether [with] 100 per cent certainty I stamped my feet and told them that we were right, but being an Ottawa boy, understanding the environment — in this particular case, we really thought they were going the wrong way on the main line.”

Since the original bidding process, Campagna says Hovey switch heaters were sold to a Canadian company, which then sold them to Thermon Heating Systems, and that is who is now installing new switch heaters along Ottawa's Confederation Line.

Campagna doesn't want to say 'I told you so,' but he does acknowledge that he'll feel safer riding the O-Train in the winter months going forward.