Transpo Says Transpo Buses In Transpo Test Are OK

After being left repeatedly in the lurch by Ottawa’s troubled bus and train service in the worst of weather, safe to say that residents don’t give a damn about the release last week concerning whether the $1-billion purchase of electric buses meets OC Transpo’s “expectations.”

That’s a pretty low bar.

And worse it has tried to cover-up, omit or lie about embarrassing information so often that it is impossible to understand how Transpo expects Ottawans to believe that these buses will work. Furthermore, it is beyond “expectations” that the haggard Ottawa commuting public would believe anything that comes out of the mouths of senior Transpo executives or, for that matter, Ottawa City Hall in general.

In fact, in the unlikely event that Ottawans joined in civic revolution to overthrow the tyrants of Laurier Avenue, there’s not court in the land that would convict them of treason. The judges would rule that treason could only occur if an open and democratic municipal government existed in the nation’s capital. You can’t commit treason if the local government has lost its legitimacy. Case dismissed. Bring out the gallows. Let them eat Beavertails.

If the city’s media department announced today that the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, I’d go out to check at 5 a.m. just to make sure.

Look at this digitized bag of fertilizer that Transpo released last week. The bus company finished testing of the new electric buses long after the decision had been made by transit commission and city council to purchase them. Maybe the headline for this release or media stories should have been: “Politicians Approve $1-Billion Bus Purchase Without Adequate Testing.” Obviously the testing wasn’t completed before the decision was made.

Didn’t anybody at Happy Town News see this coming? You know good public relations isn’t rocket science but the City of Ottawa media missile has time-after-time exploded on the pad.

Furthermore, the transit commission meeting, where the public could “contribute to a free and open democratic discussion” on the electric buggies, was called within minutes of the deadline for “contributing to a free and open democratic discussion,” so people didn’t even know the meeting was being held let alone having to be Jesse Owens to sign up. Yes, our politicians, OC Transpo and senior staffers conjured an impressive mix of hogwash there.

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And what a surprise, the OC Transpo release on OC Transpo’s testing of an OC Transpo initiative said everything turned out fine. Coincidence no doubt. Were this a sporting event, Transpo would be disqualified and the world anti doping agency would be called in for urine tests. Executives from the Pickard plant would declare the results official.

We could list the Leo Tolstoy array of lies and flub-ups by the geniuses of transit here in Ottawa but The Bulldog could be accused of pixel abuse. You’d hate to see that. Maybe the tyrants as punishment would take away our printing press. Damn them, the scoundrels.

But we should give Bulldog readers at least one egregious example of Transpo malfeasance just so they don’t think we’re making this up. Transpo told the public that the Transportation Safety Board, a world-wide respected organization (unlike OC Transpo), agreed with its findings that the abysmal LRT was safe. Well this just in. The TSB didn’t say that and Transpo attached the TSB report to its release so that the media and the public were given the smoking gun … BY OC TRANSPO ITSELF. Once again, you wonder why the trains don’t work.

Were Transpo officials being parboiled in hell by Lucifer himself (not an unlikely outcome), they would say that hell was simply fine, perhaps a bit tepid. And that Lucifer “such as gracious host. He even lets us smoke in-doors.”

Now after all this, on to the report.

OC Transpo says that in cold weather, the performance of an e-bus (pronounced eek-bus) is diminished by 24 per cent but it still meets Transpo requirements. Hmm. Now you know passengers on a stalled Confederation Line vehicle during the ice storm had to be cut out of the train by firefighters. Did that meet OC Transpo requirements? Did the firefighters’ extrication response meet OC Transpo standards?

It’s so hard to know.

Furthermore, these are brand new batteries. As batteries get older, their capacity diminishes. That’s a challenge. Your agent usually changes his car battery every four years. A mechanic told me it doesn’t need to be changed until year five. So I didn’t change it. The battery conked out on the first cold day of the season. He then put a new one in which promptly leaked acid all over the place. Is Transpo looking for mechanics? This guy meets your requirements. I can give you his name.

The report glows with reports of the e-buses ability to handle snow. Well, no kidding. With that big honkin’ battery inside, damn right it better get traction. Unfortunately, the issue with these buses is not traction. Many things cannot get traction at city hall (like Transpo press releases), but these damn buses? They’ve got traction. God bless ’em.

Here are some of the test results: operator not trained (really?); eight days in which there was no heat on the bus; not charged; low fuel (wait a second, have they got the propulsion system right?); dog tracking on highway (don’t ask); low battery; and loss of power.

City Prefers Toys Over Basic Garbage Service

Actually the buses really do run on electricity. The low fuel reading was from the diesel heater in an electric bus. Yup, you got it. The dirtiest form of gas.

And this is fun. The Transpo people simulated people in these buses by putting in instead barrels of water. But where did that water originate? Was it the raw sewage that escaped treatment from the Pickard treatment plant when the $225 million Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel failed during the ice storm? Ah what’s a couple of hundred million bucks between friends. No humans were harmed in the making of that test.

The target availability of the e-bus fleet is 75 per cent (set by whom?). The e-buses availability is 78 per cent.

The availability of my car is close to 100 per cent, except when the battery goes.

Ken Gray

Secret Footage From The OC Transpo Testing Facility

The Actual Report:

Engineering Findings – E-Bus Performance

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