Taking On The Big Transit Commute: BENN

Why does what should be routine take so much time? Routine like daily commutes.

The unacceptably long travel time from downtown to Barrhaven is likely due to a number of elements. Elements that cumulatively are not additive, but geometric, possibly exponential in nature.

Earlier this month I used public transit between downtown and Baseline Station. During the trip, I paid attention to my watch.

The first leg on the LRT is relatively quick. Perhaps 10 minutes from Parliament station to Tunney’s Pasture. Add in a less than five-minute walk from the LRT platform to the second most distant bus stop and the elapsed time is plus or minus 15 minutes.

Between busy times, the 74 and 75 bus routes leave Tunney’s within a few minutes of each other. Followed by 15 minutes of waiting. Not sure what the frequency is during rush hour, other than to say that rush hour now starts well before 2:30 pm, rather than OC Transpo’s out-of-touch 3:00 pm. A topic that perhaps the department managers for the federal public service could speak to. In any event, the elapsed time is now somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.

Buses leaving Tunney’s Pasture merge into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Scott Street. Not many bus stops, but a lot of stop-and-go. On a good day, maybe 10 minutes to the short “buses only” leg that connects Scott Street to the “what is the name of that parkway this week”. Back into bumper-to-bumper traffic. Stop-and-go traffic induced by the will it ever be completed destruction and construction associated with the western leg of the LRT. More on that later. Elapsed time: another 10 or so minutes. Trip to date elapsed time: 35-50 minutes.

From Lincoln Fields Station to Iris is quick, because it is on the buses only Transitway. Less than five minutes. That is followed by about a kilometre or so on Woodroffe Avenue, in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Another five minutes to Baseline-Algonquin Station. Trip to date elapsed time: 45-60 minutes.

This is where my clock stops, because I disembarked and walked the last one-and-a-half kilometres home. Why did I walk? Aside from being part of my routine exercise program, the local 84 route is so infrequent that I can be home before the next 84 arrives. And that is based on before the New Way to Bus was introduced.

From Baseline Station, the bus gets back on southbound Woodroffe, again in bumper-to-bumper traffic, about two to three kilometres to the Transitway that re-starts across from the Nepean Sportsplex. Having driven that section on a number of occasions at around 6:00 pm, I can safely say that it is at least 10 minutes from Baseline Station. More likely 15 minutes between 3:00 and 6:00 pm. Add in five more minutes to Fallowfield Road and the commute is now in the 60-75 minute range. Unless you are headed towards the station in what is called the middle of Barrhaven. Add in another 10 minutes for that leg, and the commuter has been in transit for 70-85 minutes.

At this point one needs to wait for the less-than-frequent local bus route. The routes that were affected the most by the New Way To Bus. It is easy to see how the time between the initial tap on in downtown Ottawa and the final tap on at the Barrhaven transfer hub can take more than 90 minutes. Note that I have not factored in any collisions that can complicate the travel times. Nor have there been any snow storms to slow traffic.

So, what can be done about this?

Start with focusing on the choke points.

Scott Street. Sorry folks, but there is nothing to do about this, until the LRT opens up sometime during the next … oh yeah, the city no longer sets completion targets.  After all, failing to meet a target might lead to someone pointing out that the target wasn’t met. And then staff and council would have to explain why.

The former Ottawa River parkway. A destruction-construction project with no end in sight. Under populated single work shifts not making much in the way of tangible progress in completing the parallel section of roadway that, when (if?) completed will double the capacity and reduce travel times down that section by a lot more than half. Something to do with the square of the radius (my brother-in-law is a flow dynamics engineer).

What about the route that runs parallel to Scott Street and the parkway? Richmond Road is an unmitigated disaster zone. Destruction-construction that has no end in sight. Rather than finish one leg and start on the next, the plan is to keep everything under construction until … oh yeah, no target date has been set.

On to the root cause. The city doesn’t care about how much they inconvenience the local residents or businesses. The crocodile tears shed for the media by local councillors plus 75 cents buys nothing at the Dollar Store. If councillors really cared, they would insist on a project plan that put a cost on the impact on local residents and businesses.

Instead, councillors are more concerned about having to explain how another deadline was missed. They recognize that the public no longer accepts the trite excuse of “the pandemic ate my homework”. Therein the root cause lies. No one who reports to work at city hall is prepared to accept responsibility for a project that lacks a meaningful work plan. A plan that sets challenging target dates. A project that takes into account the cost of inconvenience.

Is it even conceivable that the cost of inconvenience can be built into a project? Yes. For more than a decade, the province builds into its works plans the concept of the cost of inconvenience. That is why when overpasses along Highway 417 are replaced when they shut down the highway for three days, rather than bottleneck traffic for a minimum of two years.

Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill, the ball is in your court. You need to convince your colleagues around the council chamber to demonstrate that they care about the impact of this massively over-budget and over-time project has on the residents and local businesses. To demonstrate that they take their role of oversight of staff seriously. Not by throwing construction cones to the side of the road in a farcical effort to draw attention to themselves. By insisting that council recognize that time is money.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

For You:

Cutting Through The Lansdowne Hype: STANKOVIC

Two Hours Is Too Long A Commute: PATTON

Transit: This Is No Way To Bus

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