Is Transit In Ottawa Worse With Sutcliffe?

01/30/2025

This is an interesting question posed by X inhabitant Stewart Green:

Ridiculous. Ottawa is a capital city of a G7 nation. Not only has transit not improved under @_MarkSutcliffe/Amilcar, it’s gotten worse.
No doubt the Mayor blissfully ignorant to transit issues will post his daily photo. #ottnews
— Stewart Green (@StewartGreen81) January 29, 2025

Has light rail gotten worse under Mayor Mark Sutcliffes tenure? Tough call.

Let’s do the tail of the tape:

Lines 2 and 4 have been completed and appear to be working well;
Lines 2 and 4 are two years late;
Two years into his mandate, Sutcliffe still hasn’t fixed the axle, wheel, hub assembly problems on the Line 1 trains;
The public still doesn’t know what the root cause of the Confederation Line’s reliability woes is. Or are there many contributing factors?
Confederation Line trains are still moving at slow speeds due to safety and reliability concerns;
Ridership remains low while some other cities have found ways to reach pre-pandemic levels;
Bus service has decreased markedly and with it, reliability;
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he won’t give more money to Ottawa for transit until the system is reliable and safe;
Ottawa is nowhere near serving Barrhaven (a huge population centre) with light rail and LRT will not reach Kanata (the economic future of Ottawa) in the foreseeable future;
Fiscally, OC Transpo doesn’t work. The more rail built, the more operating costs increase;
The western Confederation Line is expected to be two years late but realistically longer because construction is slow;
Hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuits related to Line 1 have not been revealed.

So is rail worse than when Mayor Jim Watson handled this project?

When Watson left, rail was at a pretty low ebb. The project was way too ambitious (huge stations accomplishing nothing and an unnecessary downtown tunnel). In a vain attempt to build a “world-class” system, the city forgot the prime directive … getting people from place-to-place quickly and easily.

And the stations are not “world-class”. Architecturally they look like poured concrete mausoleums. They have all the intimacy and accessibility of Alcatraz. Furthermore, the stations aren’t heated. No architectural warmth. No warmth at all.

Watson gave us this train with the wrong route, the wrong trains and all the reliability woes.

Sutcliffe still has not fixed the line nor is it likely to be completed in the near future. The system isn’t any better than when Watson left.

So is light rail and the bus system worse than when Sutcliffe took office?

Tell us what you think.

Ken Gray

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Tags: Jim Watson light rail Mayor Mark Sutcliffe Ottawa

C from Kanata says:
01/30/2025 at 8:10 AM
You may consider copying some of the comments out of the Facebook page LRT Wrecks. You’ll see a pattern about the decline in the bus system. Buses passing by customers waiting at bus stops in frigid cold weather. There was one comment a few weeks ago from who I believe was the driver who said that the schedules were made in Montreal and they didn’t reflect the Ottawa traffic patterns. It seems the bus drivers will be a less trouble if they don’t pick up passengers and slow down, rather than be late for arriving at their checkpoints. There’s something seriously wrong with our bus system when the drivers are incentivized not to pick up passengers.
Ron Benn says:
01/30/2025 at 9:29 AM
Let’s start with the root cause being the route, and go from there.
sisco farraro says:
01/30/2025 at 11:22 AM
Based on what I have observed, the buses in Ottawa are not as full as they were, prior to the pandemic. The pandemic is now almost 4 years in the past so we can take that off the table as an excuse. Additionally, Ottawa winters are not as harsh as they were in the past so weather is not a factor. As Ron & C point out the routes do too much twisting and turning to allow drivers to meet schedules, in lieu of providing good service. So, what is the root cause? In Sisco’s opinion the root cause(s) are Glen Gower and Renee Amilcar. The solution to the Glen Gower issue is for residents to vote him off council in 2026 or for Mark Sutcliffge to reassign his portfolio. The Amilcar problem (by the way, she is a perfect illustration of The Peter Principle) can be resolved by assigning her to tasks performed by a low-level lackey in city hall. Enough already!