Ottawa Transit: If Words Were Buses

One wonders of word fatigue has set in among Ottawa residents.

What we get from city hall is words and very little action for the amount of money spent. In the wordy excerpt below from transit commissioner Glen Gower, we get a prime example.

Ottawans get high-minded concepts that hide the fact that the city has set back transit in this city for decades.

Below is the Gower excerpt with The Bulldog’s comments bracketed and in boldface:

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I think of transportation like a toolbox. If your only option to move around the city is your car, it’s like owning a toolbox with only a hammer in it. We need to give people a screwdriver, a wrench, a measuring tape, some pliers – to make the toolbox actually useful (it’s hard to imagine a more simplistic opening. But credit where credit is due. Simplistic messages tend to resonate while complicated messages get ignored).

And the hammer won’t work for every job (Good grief. Enough already). It’s also important to think about the 27 per cent of people in Ottawa who do not drive: kids, seniors, people with disabilities, people who can’t afford or choose not to drive (And what are they getting? A dysfunctional bus system that takes some people from Barrhaven to downtown in a whopping two hours one way. And a light rail system that is highly unlikely to be finished in the prescribed 2027 deadline. The progress along the Ottawa River parkway is glacial and worse is the stretch from Cleary Station to Algonquin College. And let’s not forget that the only reason the lemon LRT still works on Line 1 is that the city keeps throwing axles at it at a breakneck pace because they are constantly failing in a problem the city has been unable to fix since 2019). They have a right to mobility as well (too bad they’re not getting it), and choices for how they get around (Actually not choices but choice. You must buy a car to get around in this city).

Give people more choices (Like our transit?) , and we can improve affordability (Fares were raised recently and seniors threatened with outrageous increases), convenience (Two hours to Barrhaven is convenient? We could go on with this but let’s just put it briefly: New Ways To Wait), health (Healthy yes if you consider the long walk to the nearest bus stop. Unhealthy, if you consider that all the construction, unreliability, and missed building deadlines contribute to greater greenhouse gas emissions.), lower emissions (See the previous comment), and quality of life in Ottawa (What quality of life is there in spending four hours to commute daily between Barrhaven and downtown? What quality of life is there in having to sit in traffic jams because transit is so poor?).

Our goal must be to over-achieve on the mode share shift (in which the city is failing miserably), and do it sooner than 2046 (Your agent expects to be dead by then. Two decades? Really? Definitely Municipal Standard Time). The best cities in the world are figuring this out, and many are way ahead of us in making this shift (No kidding.).

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Let’s get out of the hypothetical and into reality. Our transit system in Ottawa is terrible. Gower could better spend some time away from his dreams and fairy dew concepts of good transit and make Ottawa’s system work. Provide some oversight on the west end Line 1 construction that look highly unlikely to be finished by 2027. Find a way to speed it up.

We’re not getting much in the way of value for $7 billion and council is doing nothing to speed construction.

Save the high-minded comments for the next conference you attend. Get practical. Finish the transit we have and give us a functional bus service at a reasonable price.

Ken Gray

This newsletter excerpt is courtesy of the city-wide community group Your Applewood Acres (And Beyond) Neighbours

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