Why Can’t Ottawa Get Transit Right? THE VOTER
Who was the New Way to Bus supposed to improve things for? It certainly wasn’t the passengers.
OC Transpo will no doubt be saying for a week or so that it’s just the system going through an adjustment period and all will calm down shortly as people learn the new routes and stops. What will they be saying two months from now when these people still aren’t able to get on the bus? How will they explain the upsurge in traffic as those who can opt to drive instead of taking the bus?
What’s their plan to review the changes to see if they are achieving the goals they had? Are they willing to revisit the revamp if it’s not working? Having reduced service, have they reduced their workforce and put themselves in a position where they couldn’t pivot even if they wanted to?
Here’s a bit of new information for OC Transpo general manager Renee Amilcar and her bus operation which they may be unaware of: The transit system is supposed to work for its passengers, not the other way around. She seems to think that it’s for the passengers to adapt to whatever OC Transpo is willing to give them instead of OC Transpo providing the service that passengers need.
Maybe this will be the demonstration of incompetence and lack of caring for the consumer that will finally be the thing that gets Amilcar shown the door at OC Transpo. Although that is a very desired outcome, I’m having trouble saying that what passengers are going through, and have gone through over the past number of years, is worth it. It should not have taken anywhere near this level of poor performance for the axe to have fallen on Amilcar and some of her senior staff.
Other cities seem to be able to provide safe, reliable and affordable transit services for their residents. Why does Ottawa have such a difficult time?
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The root of most of these issues seems to stem from the lack of maintainers. Why has nobody asked in Council, why dozens of maintainers have walked away from their city jobs with lovely pensions in order to work in the private sector?
There has to be something with either management of the maintenance workers or management of OC transport that is driving people away from financial security and benefits. And it’s got to be bad.
We can’t fix transit until we can fix the buses. We can’t fix the buses until we get to the root of why maintenance people are quitting
I don’t use transit any more – being retired and less patient than I used to be. But as a user for over 20 years I always said it was the only municipal transit system I ever experienced that disliked its customers.
Madame Voter, did anyone expect anything different than what happened with this new way to bus? The lead-up was exemplary so one could only conclude disaster would soon follow. And it did. In spades.
Transit riders must have calmness and acceptance far beyond the norm.
I feel sorry for those who have no option but to use public transit. Am I the only one who noticed how busy the roads are now? Perhaps many transit riders saw the writing on the wall and got a head start driving?
The City of Ottawa is rudderless … too many chiefs who know not what they do.
In any event, heads must roll.
Taking a bit of a different tack here, I looked at new transit routes near where I live. The bus routes on the “minor corridors and mainstreets” in the new Official Plan look like not much happening on these roads now. The currently proposed seismic changes in municipal zoning appear to be focused on “corridors and mainstreets” with some new major transit station classifications that call for large “evolving” high intensification areas encroaching on existing residential areas. Situations where 20 dwelling units are allowed on single house lots in neighbourhood residential areas and such. So here we seem to be proposing reduced bus service while at the same time increased housing intensification to house the population closer to the new transit service plans. What is it about the coordination of municipal transit, transportation and land use planning that I’m having trouble understanding this morning?
A couple of weeks ago, on the eve of the rollout of a New Way to Bus, someone noted there were a couple of ways the project could be rolled out, in phases or in one big bang. Ottawa always goes for the big bang and in this case we have ended up with Another Big Bust.
John,
The only thing wrong with your ability to understand the coordination issues at City Hall is that you’re approaching it with logic and common sense, two things that are only noticeable down there by their absence. One cannot comprehend the incomprehensible unless, it seems, you work for the City or are a member of Council.
The basic answer is that they operate in silos down there and it’s coincidence, not deliberate planning, if anything is done in a collaborative and coordinated fashion. Like most of us, you’ve probably scratched your head while watching Ottawa Hydro tear up a street to work on their underground lines only to see, after Hydro has restored and repaved the street, a City Public Works crew pull up and rip up that new paving job to work on the sewer lines. Six months later, you may see Bell turn up to start digging things up again to work on their cables. It’s great for the asphalt companies – they get to pave the same few blocks three times instead of once. Not so great for the City or those who foot the bill and suffer the neighbourhood disruption caused by this chaotic lack of planning.
The same (lack of) process is going on with OC Transpo and the rest of the City administration. The right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing.
They also don’t seem to recall when the school year ends for middle school and high school students. In their wisdom, they’ve even made changes to school routes. Why wouldn’t you have left those alone for the two months until school is finished for the year? In fact, why not make all the changes at the end of June when ridership drops for the summer?
The simple answer? They won’t do it because it makes sense for the passengers and we can’t have that, now can we!
Actually, Ken, rather than taking an analytical approach to solving problems the city has settled into a hit and miss approach. The problem with this methodology is it takes more time to solve problems and costs a lot more money, taxpayer money. This why I cringe any time someone says the city should raise taxes. No, the city should not raise taxes, it should stop wasting taxpayers’ money. As I told my daughter at exam time when she was young “Don’t rush through the exam questions and get things wrong, take your time and get the answers right. There’s no prize given to the person who finishes first.”