City Bullies Seniors With Massive Transit Fare Hike

Bullying. That’s what the City of Ottawa is doing by raising senior transit fares from $49 a month to $108 a month.

The city is picking on people who can’t defend themselves in the most brutal way.

We’re not talking about rich seniors who could buy their own bus. No. We’re talking about the nine per cent of seniors who scramble from GIS cheque to GIS cheque.to pay for the next box of Kraft Dinner. We’re talking about people who have giant health problems as they face the end of their lives. Whose drug costs aren’t always covered by the Ontario government. People whose luxury is two cans of beans rather than one can of beans.

During the last transit strike, there were reports of seniors skipping meals to pay for taxis to get to doctor appointments because their were no buses. Or people who skipped the appointments altogether. Those are the drowning people who the city is throwing an anchor to get on the city’s crappy, unreliable, dysfunctional and sometimes downright dangerous transit system.

This is mean. This is bullying. This is attacking people who can’t defend themselves. This is gouging mobility-challenged people for their mobility. This is agism, the only ‘ism’ still not dubbed politically incorrect in our so-called politically correct society. Rather the tyranny of the easily offended and self-righteous.

And why is the city attacking seniors? Because it has completely cocked-up the world-class transit system as touted by long-gone transit chief John Manconi. This isn’t the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. This is the gang that couldn’t find the trigger to shoot crooked.

The city has botched transit so badly in this community that the service is poor and is running a horrible deficit. And stop blaming the pandemic for the ridership decline. There’s enough time between then and now to have made up for the passenger loss from Covid and even work from home. Strangely people haven’t stopped using their cars because of Covid.

How long will OC Transpo continue to blame disease for its ridership decline. How far back in history will the city go to blame pandemics? The black plague?

Here’s a paradigm that might astonish the tall foreheads at Ottawa City Hall. If you produce a good transit system, people will take it. If you produce a bad system, people won’t take it. And just in case the pointy heads at OC Transpo don’t get this … it means you’ve got a bad system.

In total, Ottawans are paying $6.4 billion with a ‘B’ for a transit system that is woefully late, ridiculously over-extravagant and, oh yes, doesn’t work.

They took a good idea … light rail … and squandered it using billions of dollars to do it. Ottawans might have over-paid.

If people aren’t mad as hell and won’t take it anymore, they should be. This elderly rate increase is like kicking the chair out from under your grandmother.

Picking on the most vulnerable in our society to pay for the abject stupidity that is transit in this city is unconscionable. Well somebody has to pay, the city will say. So let’s make that somebody pay who can afford it … you know … rich guys. Figure it out, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, OC Transpo general manager Renee Amilcar and transit commission chairman Glen Gower. Your three minutes of study wasn’t enough.

And get a heart. That one you bought at the dollar store isn’t doing the job.

Ken Gray

For You:

Aging And Health: THE BULLDOG

OC Transpo Ridership Hurt By Poor Service

Hiking Transit Fare ‘Counterproductive’: CULLEN

Bookmark The Bulldog, click here