Transpo Flying Blind On Ridership: THE VOTER

I’ve been riding transit for give-or-take sixty years and in that time I can only recall being asked twice by the bus company about my travelling habits.

The first was in the late 1970s around the time the bus pass was first introduced and the second not very long ago. Not what one would call an assiduous pursuing of input.

I have no idea how OC Transpo makes its decisions on how to plan routes or for the frequency of buses and trains but it seems a first step would be to canvass first their riders as well as those who don’t use their services.

As we know, there are tens of thousands of trips made within Ottawa every day by people who choose to do it via methods other than by transit. Some of these are for good reasons such as short trips, a desire for exercise or needing to bring things with them that couldn’t be accommodated on a bus or train. Many others are for the good reason that the transit service doesn’t meet their needs but the transit company will never know about that because they never ask.

OC Transpo talks a great deal about the need to increase ridership but, if they don’t know why people aren’t using transit, how can they possibly expect to deliver a service that even approaches meeting people’s needs? I spoke recently with someone who has had to buy a car because the last bus from her late-night job was cut. There were 12 people who took that bus and they now either car-pool or drive alone.

What this woman told me was that it’s not only that one trip that she no longer takes by bus. Since she no longer has a bus pass, she does her groceries and other errands by car instead of bus and she ferries her kids around to their various sports and social activities. By cutting that single bus run, OC Transpo has lost four pass-holders in that family alone. Her oldest is almost of an age to get his driving licence so there will soon be an extra person in the family to share the driving and further reduce any possible need for transit.

She has free parking at work and gets some money towards gas from two people who ride to work with her. It’s a bargain for them because they pay her half the price of a bus pass and get driven door-to-door, a real bonus when you’re a woman going home in the dark. She finds that, even with the cost of the vehicle to cover, she’s almost ahead of the game financially and has gained a lot of free time. When the weather’s bad, she’s very glad not to be walking to and from the stops or waiting without a shelter for a bus.

As well as losing this woman as a customer for the foreseeable future, they are also losing her kids as present and future customers. They would have to offer a considerable improvement in service to return this family to the transit-riding fold. Instead, it seems their plan to increase ridership includes cuts to service; service that, when it’s available, isn’t reliable and increased fares.

And they’re genuinely mystified when people aren’t breaking down the doors to convert to transit from other means of transport.

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

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