Probing Ottawa’s And Canada’s Transit Death Spiral

08/26/2024

Ottawa is not alone among Canadian cities in trying to fund transit.

In a podcast on CBC called Front Burner, they explore the money woes of transit services.

The podcast dwells on Ottawa and OC Transpo quite a bit but it really does not address the very big problems here. That is a chaotic roll-out of light rail, interminable waits for construction of the service to be completed, reliability problems of both LRT and buses and dangerous derailments of the system. The CBC podcast emphasizes the problems caused by the pandemic, and those are real, but there are huge issues here the podcast does not address.

The podcast also provides a transcript of the show:

Ottawa is not the only city struggling to build transit infrastructure and pay for day-to-day service. Vancouver is building out its SkyTrain and LRT, but isn’t sure it can afford to operate either when they’re finished. It’s even looking at possibly cutting existing transit services in half next year. Edmonton bought electric buses that don’t work well in winter, and now it can’t afford to replace the rest of its bus fleet. And, 13 years later, commuters in Toronto are still waiting for the Eglinton LRT to open.

To listen or to read the podcast transcript “Canada’s public transit ‘death spiral'”, click here.