Why Do You Love OC Transpo? Worthless City Survey

The document below is absolutely astonishing.

It is a prime example of doing something the same way because we’ve always done it that way. Efficacy be damned.

2023 Commuter Attitude Survey_EN

A group of government bodies want to understand people’s attitudes toward transportation in Ottawa. You mean this TRANS committee doesn’t know how people feel about transportation here?

Well here’s a short summary. Save yourself $93,000:

1. Light rail stinks;
2. Our roads stink;
3. Traffic stinks;
4. The bus system stinks;
5. Construction delays stink;
6. That light rail is horribly late stinks;
7. That people must buy old beaters to get to work reliably stinks;
8. That there is no parking for these beaters downtown stinks;
9. That people are standing in the rain, the cold, the heat, the snow and the ice waiting for a bus or train stinks;
10. The government bodies have created a transportation crisis in this city stinks;
11. That people must be cold-called by telephone solicitors to discover something that is patently obvious stinks;
12. That people are spending as much as four hours a day commuting stinks;
13. Government transportation policy stinks;
14. Government transportation planning stinks.

We could go on but that probably covers most of it.

How a group of governments can be so dim is difficult to believe? Conducting a survey on transportation in Ottawa is like asking the clients of Lucifer how they are enjoying the weather.

“Fine, thank you. I enjoy boiling in hell. Never a chilly draft. And the company is fascinating. Such interesting people though the landlord could perhaps hold off a bit on the central heating. And the screaming in torture and terror is a tad noisy and disconcerting. Aren’t there noise bylaws down here?”

And the City of Ottawa is spending $93,000 from a budget from all the partners of $180,000. What an abysmal waste of hard-earned taxpayer money.

Create A Federal Inquiry Into NCC Incompetence

And best the cold-callers have their fortitude up. Nothing like phoning someone during their downtime after working hard all day and spending four hours on transit. Some foul language could ensue.

“Thank you for participating in this vital endeavour that will shape our transportation for decades to come.”

The frightening thing is that city officials might take this survey seriously. It’s bound to be woefully inaccurate, not through any fault of the cold-callers, but because of the rapid rate of change in the national capital region.

Let’s go through a few reasons:

1. The pandemic: this has disrupted our transportation patterns markedly and if Covid continues to be a problem, how badly do you want to take transit?
2. Work-at-home: nobody really knows how this will turn out because we are in early innings on this issue. Doubtful the people at Ottawa City Hall know how work-at-home will ensue in its own workplace but this study will ask people who know even less about it. Less about nothing;
3. If you can work at home in Kanata, why can’t you work at home from Red Deer, Alberta. And don’t think that if the federal government starts to expand geographically across the country that MPs won’t be clamouring for federal departments in their ridings. And how will that affect transportation in Ottawa with a gutted federal government. The city planning department doesn’t know and neither will the cold callers.

This survey is a gruesome waste of money, likely to be very inaccurate due to changing social and economic circumstances, but nevertheless it will help us respond to future unfathomable needs.

In other words, the worst thing our so-called planners could do is take this survey seriously.

Ken Gray

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