Fewer Words, More Action, Your Worship: WHOPPER WATCH

“Public transit is vitally important for our city, vitally important for our residents and for our economy, so we have to invest in public transit.”

Mayor Mark Sutcliife in his summary of the upcoming budget

So why not treat transit like it is “vitally important.”

According to Knoxdale-Merivale Councillor Sean Devine, the OC Transpo program New Ways To Bus lopped 75,000 hours off service to Ottawans. Last weekend, the O-Train spent most of the weekend down either through scheduled or  unscheduled stoppages.

Right-thinking people would say that breakdowns are fatal to transit ridership. At OC Transpo, it’s called business-as-usual. City council does nothing to stop it. Transit commission chairman Glen Gower writes high-level essays on his transit tool box while low-level service lives up to its name.

Where is the agreement between Sutcliffe and Premier Doug Ford for Metrolinx to take over the rail side of OC Transpo? Wouldn’t that take some budget pressure off the transit service? Action or words, Your Worship?

“Having a premium service, or an ideal service, is not achievable in an environment where we’ve got a huge gap in funding and when passenger levels are down from before the pandemic.” the mayor said. We’re doing everything we can to close that gap.”

So what is the four-hour commute from Barrhaven to downtown and back? Premium service? Ideal service? Average service. Less-than-average service? Putrid service? And the pandemic? Many U.S. services report a recovery from the pandemic lows of transit ridership. In Ottawa, the pandemic is not a challenge to overcome. It’s an excuse. And Your Worship, you have a gap in funding because transit in this community is under-funded and unreliable.

One of the factors of production is transportation. People need to get around. The roads are clogged and pot-holed. And transit is a failure. Sutcliffe, a businessman, knows that transportation makes business work. Transit allows hard-pressed Ottawans to get to work and back and brings customers to business services. Good transportation encourages businesses to locate here.

Ottawa has a screaming need for good transit. Residents have lousy transit. Six years since the first O-Train derailment (yes, derailment), no route cause has been found for the trains’ massive technical problems. Maybe the city is concerned about liability. Instead, the solution is to replace faulty axles as fast as used cars are served at the Timmy’s drive-thru window.

Sutcliffe has had three years and counting to fix the trains. Last weekend, no trains. Now that’s Municipal Standard Time.

And where are you, Glen Gower?

The mayor’s solution is to raise fares making it difficult for the few passengers on Transpo to afford the service. Has anyone consulted a marketing firm to discover what the optimum price-point is for transit service? Nope. Just hike the fares. High prices and unreliability have reached the point where beater cars are a better option than transit. Maybe an expert could be brought in to organize bus routes. That might be the job of Transpo’s general manager if we had one.

Appalling transit, a resultant public outcry and Mark Sutcliffe gives us more police. Many accuse the left of relying too much on ideology and not practicality. But Sutcliffe’s police move shows that ideology is not just the purview of the left.

Bumpy roads, traffic jams, lousy transit, two-years-and-more of late train construction, that late construction paralyzing traffic (note one of your minion’s traffic-safety cone toss), no fix for those trains, route cutbacks and higher fares.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe runs for mayor at his peril.

Fewer untruths and more action, Your Worship. You’ve only got a few months left to do your job well.

We’re sick of words and politics. Give us good governance.

Ken Gray

For You:

Transit Mess Means Gower Should Resign

Ottawa Transit: If Words Were Buses

Mayor Responds To Tierney Controversy

Our Sad-Sack City Council: MULVIHILL

Taking On The Big Transit Commute: BENN

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