Make Bad Traffic An Election Issue: DEVINE

10/15/2025

Recently as I was leaving City Hall to head home, I did as I often do when pulling out of the parking garage, which is to enter my address in my GPS to see what’s the fastest way home.

Not too long ago, my drive home was 20 minutes. Over the past year, it’s become progressively worse, creeping longer and longer. On this particular Wednesday, my GPS indicated that my drive home would be a painstakingly long 49 minutes. But that wasn’t the shocking part. What astonished me was that to get home by bike would be 63 minutes.

Yes, indeed, folks. My 16-kilometre commute home would only be 14 minutes longer by cycling. That’s how bad congestion has become in Ottawa. And this was just a typical Wednesday. There wasn’t any major event. There wasn’t any major accident, or protest, or rainy conditions. It was just Wednesday.

If there’s a small handful of issues I repeat over and over in this newsletter, it’s that it is getting progressively harder to move around in Ottawa. Either because we’re too dependent on cars, or because our transit is unreliable, or because our new transit systems are years behind schedule.

And I know that it’s hypocritical of me to complain about traffic, because I’m part of that traffic. My Honda Civic is one of those cars clogging up the route home. And I am eagerly waiting for LRT Stage 2 West expansion to open so that I can take Bus Route 82 down Greenbank to the new Pinecrest Station, for a quick ride downtown. But that project is also delayed.

I’m putting this in the newsletter because I want to remind anyone reading this – whether you live in Ward 9, or whether you read my newsletter even if I’m not your councillor – to make this an issue in next year’s municipal elections. Ask every candidate looking to be your councillor (including me): “What did you do … what are you going to do to get Ottawa moving again?” Ask anyone running for mayor the same thing.