City PR Covers Up Depth Of Transpo Woes
“Staff reported that OC Transpo system ridership reached 5.9 million customer-trips in April 2024.”
Happy Town News press release
Now that sounds good, except here’s CTV News Ottawa:
OC Transpo missed its ridership targets in the first four months of the year, as ridership continues to struggle coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report for the Transit Commission shows there were 5.9 million passenger trips on buses and the O-Train in April, below the 6.6 million passenger trip target.
How are Ottawans supposed to get some perspective on the crisis at OC Transpo … “5.9 million customer-trips in April 2023” from the city media relations department means nothing.
That’s called lying by omission. The CTV story shows us a transit service with very serious problems. Happy Town News gives us a worthless 5.9 million passenger trips.
How are the people of this city supposed to understand the depth of the problems at OC Transpo if they are not given all the facts?
Happy Town News would call hell tepid.
It’s an embarrassment. An expensive embarrassment. That’s the way the public’s municipal government serves the Ottawa public. We don’t need cover ups. We need facts and not misleading facts.
Happy Town News has become an organ to cover the collective posteriors of a failing Ottawa City Hall.
Ken Gray
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Ottawa Transit might be the only transit system that gets graded on ridership stranded passenger numbers.
If a company whose shares are traded on a public exchange were to issue a press release of this nature they would likely receive a rebuke from the Ontario Securities Commission for misleading the public.
Running at 89% of forecast is nothing to be proud of. It just reinforces the conclusion that the forecast is a work of fiction.
Note to Council – the residents and employers of Ottawa deserve so much better. And that is in your hands. That rests on your collective shoulders.
The popular phrase “The citizens of Ottawa deserve so much better” raises the question “Do the citizens of Ottawa really deserve better politicians and bettee service operations?”
Most reasonable people would observe that as the elwxtorate keeps on electing and or hiring people of dubious qualifications, merit or rational reasoning power, maybe we do deserve what we are getting!
Good point, Jeff.
Good to hear from you. Hope you are well.
cheers
kgray