City LRT Is Just A Tramway In Disguise: BENN

09/14/2024

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OC Transpo is running an eight-figure deficit.

Increasing revenues involves some combination of increasing ridership and increasing fares. Fares are set once a year, by council. Have to wait on that. Ridership – OC’s ridership studies are as secret as the nuclear codes for the U.S. president. Who really knows? Seriously.

That leaves cutting costs. Top three cost elements (educated guess, no inside info): compensation, fuel and maintenance. Cutting back on frequency reduces all three elements, pretty much proportionately.

How quickly can OC Transpo pivot? There are union agreements to be followed (perhaps even respected). Those agreements dictate notice periods for cutting back hours for drivers. Reversing a notice to reduce hours might have significant consequences. Do you recall the fiasco of September 2019 when then Mayor Jim Watson insisted on the LRT starting up before he went on a tax-payer funded trip to Amsterdam, to evaluate that city’s night life. That’s right folks, Watson was auditioning for the job of Night Mayor. Anyway, drivers had been given notice. Buses were on their way to decommissioning. And then both were needed because the train had problems. Immediately.

Ottawa’s public transit system might not be fatally flawed, but it is permanently flawed. The LRT system is neither fish nor fowl. It was designed to meet political purposes. LRT systems are supposed to move relatively more people, relatively long distances in relatively less time. Trams, in contrast, are just higher capacity buses on rails, with frequent stops, moving people relatively short distances. The Confederation Line is a tram line wearing an LRT cloak. Thirteen stations over 12 kilometres. Stations within sight of each other. Not to worry, Stage 2 just extends the same parametres. Station-after-station within a kilometre or so of each other. Just like the tram line that runs down St. Clair Avenue in Toronto.

OC Transpo is a dysfunctional disaster, by design. Governed (a term I use very loosely) by councillors who aren’t bright enough to understand that demanding transit management improve service levels while also cutting costs is an impossibility. Challenged with operating an LRT system that is comprised of an array of equipment provided by multiple suppliers, which makes the flawless integration/synchronization of software very challenging. Project managed by city staff who had never done the job from end to end before.

OC Transpo is structurally incapable of meeting the service levels required in a city of a million residents. Because people who didn’t know what they didn’t know made decisions based on political expediency rather than on operational effectiveness. While some of the actors have changed (lead actors Watson, former city manager Steve Kanellakos and ex-Transpo general manager John Manconi having exited stage left), the amateur nature of the cast remains.

An old adage from a friend in Texas comes to mind. You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken droppings (he used a shorter, less family friendly term) no matter how much mayonnaise you add.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.