Transpo Launches 5-Year-Plan Charm Offensive
The ghost of former mayor Jim Watson walks the halls of Ottawa City Hall.
You see it in the culture of the municipality … highly political, thoroughly blanketed with smothering public relations, knee-jerk utilitarianism and a rather glaring disrespect for democratic procedures and the citizenry in general. And just getting stuff wrong.
We’ve seen it in the railroaded and rushed purchase of a $1 billion of ebuses (so rushed that OC Transpo finished its testing of the buses long after they had been approved … but not to worry, the testing turned out fine. Everything was on-time and on-budget), the gruesome procedure of approving the Trim Road community improvement plan which bracketed the Canada Day weekend when no one was watching (even Mayor Mark Sutcliffe couldn’t hold his nose and vote for it), or the anti-democratic measures taken at the Ottawa Police Services Board used to quell rightful criticism of the failed Ottawa Police Service.
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This is the kind of realpolitik that occurs in places that aren’t especially democratic. And council lets this happen and sometimes is a part of it. Somewhere Machiavelli is smiling.
All of this coming with a huge serving of public-relations skunk that even pipelines of propaganda perfume would fail to quell (we’re thinking light rail here but we could go on and on and on and on …).
There was a time in municipal politics, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, when truth was considered an option.
All of the above is a prelude to a point (or burying your lede if you will).
OC Transpo is on a charm offensive. Everything is “successful.” The municipal corporation talks about the “successful” opening of the Trillium Line sometime. And then there is this:
“O-Train Lines 2 and 4 successfully handed over to Operations … O-Train Line 1 East successfully handed over to Operations … O-Train Lines 1 and 3 West successfully handed over to Operations.” Of course, those actions are far off in the future but they will be “successful.” Trust us … when have we ever been wrong?
Well that’s a relief. Tax-weary Ottawans need not worry about the success of Lines 2, 4, 1 and 3. They are all successful and they are successful because OC Transpo says so. And Happy Town News says it’s successful. Perhaps Ottawans are not allowed to decide for themselves. But then look at Lansdowne. Our betters held countless information sessions, then did what they wanted. These public meetings are so bad that former councillor Clive Doucet called for them to be ended. And now they are held virtually … you know, dog-and-pony-show style … orchestrated.
And safely. How can you throw a virtual tomato at a virtual public servant? And at the end of the virtual session, everything is virtually fine. To make themselves useful, maybe some of Ottawa’s computer hackers could work on this virtual tomato-throwing. It’s something at which they are probably good.
The successful quotes above come from Transit Services Five-Year Road Map. A page-turner to be sure. It will only be read by a few, at best, and a news-challenged scribbler in the Bulldoggiest days of summer (please note: how much money was spent on this obscure report? It looks as though it was designed by virtual angels. One wonders what the pay grade of angels is these days).
As usual, Happy Town News and OC Transpo almost got it right. But they didn’t … PR-wise. Nothing like creating a five-year plan to calm the nerves of Ottawans. Yes, a five-year plan. How quaint. How Stalinesque. “Comrade you meet quota in five-year plan. Gud. Now what to do with all this steel?
The nice thing about five-year plans of long ago were that they all met or exceeded their quotas … even when they didn’t. Sort of like on-time and on-budget. “Comrade, you say you not meet quota. We will say you met quota. Not only that, we meet our quota of under-performing leaders in gulag.”
Fortunately, the consequences of missing a five-year plan at city hall are not the same. Staffers just keep going on and on. Furthermore at the end of five years, no one remembers the five-year plan anyway. Even the people who were supposed to meet its goals, the people who set those goals and the people who wrote the report. Five-year plan? What five-year plan?
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Anyway, the point of all this is that everything will be fine and even if it is not fine, it will be fine. It will be “successful.” The form chart says otherwise but that’s why there’s horse races. Sometimes rarely, there’s a surprise. And, apparently, this is the time.
And so the culture of Watson continues. Closed, uncaring and exclusive. Twelve years of habit are hard to break. Someone could try, maybe.
And we peasants of Ottawa should not worry our pretty, empty, rattling little heads about this OC Transpo business.
Everything will be “successful,” even when it is not.
Ken Gray
City-hall thinking at its highest point. Where are Moose and Squirrel when you need them?
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A couple of comments from a quick, and I mean really quick, flip through the slide deck.
Slide 4: Ridership #s are from 2019. Why? Could it be because the 2022 #s (post pandemic) are anemic?
Slide 14: The second most important Key Performance Indicator re “Our People” is the percentage of staff performance reviews. Really? That is a KPI? How is anything other than 100% not an abject failure?
Slide 28: The second KPI is the percentage of the population within walking distance of a bus stop (400-800 metres). Is it 400 metres or 800 metres? Sliding scales are a sleight of hand way of claiming success.
Slide 28: The seventh KPI is on time performance. Wow, just wow. Not the top KPI. The seventh.
Slides 46-50: Many of the KPI performance stats are due by Q4 2026. OC Transpo’s target for releasing the results of much of its KPI scorecard is four and a half years from now. Brings a whole new meaning to the word “Key”.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned but, when I went to school, if you blotted your copybook on pages 1, 2 and 3, you were not allowed to turn over to page 4 until the first three pages were corrected. When they have “successfully” delivered the first phase of the LRT, then it will be time to talk about the “successes” they are planning for future phases.
How about, Mme Amilcar, you fix the problems you already have before telling us how marvelously “successful” you’re going to be in the future? Aside from anything else, you are giving us the very standards against which to measure your “success”. It’s a little hard to get past the stench (in some cases, literal!) of your train’s past abject failures to visualise any future “success”.
What possible reason would we have for any hope things will be different? Most of us are a bit smarter than to fall for OC Transpo’s dangling of shiny objects to detract us from the reality. We’ve learned a sorry lesson and won’t give the benefit of the doubt again.
Voter, OC Transpo’s document is directed at city council, not at the “most of us” you cite in your last paragraph.
History has told Mme Amilcar that council is easily distracted by shiny objects.
History has told Mme Amilcar that council has demonstrated a limited capacity to learn the lessons offered to it.
History has told Mme Amilcar that there be no meaningful, probing questions posed. Her document will be accepted as submitted and filed away, never to be referenced again.
In short, she will have accomplished her objective. Present a report, replete with stock photos and interesting formats and council will give her a free pass, until the next LRT fiasco occurs.