LRT: City Can’t Get Lies Straight: WHOPPER WATCH
“The first day of operation was very positive with almost 21,000 customer trips completed on Line 2. This is almost three times the number of customer trips made on the replacement bus service last fall. We continued to see positive ridership numbers over the course of the week (please see below for the detailed results from this week), however it is too early to draw any conclusions on overall ridership trends at this time.”
OC Transpo press release Friday on Line 2 ridership
So everything is going great on Line 2. “Very positive.”
And yet early in the week in an OC Transpo press release, ridership on Line 2 was seen to be “light to moderate.”
One of those two assessments must be wrong. The first releases show mediocre ridership and then it is very positive.
OC Transpo can’t get its lies straight.
Furthermore, how good is 21,000 rides in the big scheme of things? Does it matter that ridership on the new trains is three times as high as on the buses?
In other words, these are figures just thrown at a wall to see if they will stick. There’s nothing there to justify “very positive” or negative. Just how long is a piece of string? Of course, the ridership is “very positive” because that’s the way Ottawa City Hall wants you to think it is. And if you think it is positive, then it’s positive.
So a “light to moderate” ridership early in the week becomes “very positive” by the end of the week with no real parametres on which to assess these conclusions.
The only sure thing is that one of those two assessments is wrong.
People don’t trust Ottawa City Hall. The media and the public are lied to, gamed and lied to by omission.
Already, Ottawans have been gamed in the city Unfairness Campaign and now on Line 2 ridership. And only 11 days into the new year. This could be a bumper year for lies.
Hundred of thousands of dollars of public relations and senior management salaries yet the city can’t get its story right. This rail yarn has more holes in it than Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s marathon socks.
City hall has not learned its lessons from the LRT inquiry and other faux pas.
Pathetic.
Ken Gray
For You:
A City Unfairness Campaign: SARAVANAMUTOO
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Ottawa Gets More Than Fair Transit Share: PATTON
Is Ottawa’s Light Rail Today’s Dinosaur?
Too Early To Judge Line 2: CULLEN
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Good point. So lets assume those 21,000 rides were taken by people commuting 5 days a week, so twice a day. That means 2,100 people took the train.
I am sure the numbers will go up when they take the back-up buses away as from what I am reading, the back-up buses save people around 15 minutes on their commute
The replacement bus #2 didn’t cover the entire length of the current Line 2 or any of Line 4. It only went between Greenboro and Bayview so to compare its ridership to the full train route including the airport spur is comparing apples and oranges.
How many of the people on the train this week were not regular passengers but were taking the new service for a spin?
When they cut the parallel bus services such as the 97 to the airport thereby forcing people from those routes onto the train, they will experience another blip in numbers. These are not increases in ridership and don’t bring any more money to the transit service so should not be used to imply there’s an improvement in uptake. When people take the train for a couple of weeks to try it out and then revert to their cars because it doesn’t meet their needs, will we get a report of the dropping numbers?
Did they do any surveys of these riders to see how they got from A to B in December? Were they were planning to ride the train permanently or just there to kick the tires? Do they know how many are just moving from another form of transit and how many were previously driving? That information would be more useful that giving the total ridership with no further breakdown.