Late Trillium Line Hurts Carleton University: THE VOTER

Published 10/23/2023 · Updated 10/23/2023

The Voter looks at the problems the late opening of the Trillium Line has caused:

The delay in the Trillium Line is no doubt a great comfort to those Carleton students who rented accommodation in 2022 in locations that made them dependent on the still-nonexistent Trillium Line.

Some of them might actually graduate without ever having set foot on the train. People who had counted on it to get to work have been equally inconvenienced.

Trillium Line Drop Date Extended, Vague

Yes, there’s a substitute bus line, the No. 2, which follows the general direction of the train but is often blocks away from the train route and is about 15 minutes longer than the eventual train will be. The No. 2, of course, only goes as far south as South Keys Station on the Transitway so doesn’t replicate where the Trillium Line was supposed to be serving when the bus launched, i.e. only the six original Trillium stations.

Interestingly, they are planning to continue the parallel bus service for some time after the train is up and running. Now I wonder what experience in the last four years led them to that brilliant thought? Could it be that they have actually learned from the fiasco that was the Confederation Line launch? Does anyone want to hazard a guess at how long that dual service will operate? And at what cost?

OC Transpo has just launched a new website dedicated to the O-Train expansion which includes both the Trillium and Confederation Lines.

It’s claiming an opening date of Spring 2024 for Line 2. The new site is at http://www.octranspodotcom/en/o-train-extension/ and supposedly tells you all you need to know about the new service. Well, it tells you all the Happy Town News about the new service and skates quite neatly around the “Promises Made, Promises Broken” parts.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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