Comment: Another year, another LRT breakdown

Another year, another LRT breakdown.

Ottawa saw another Keystone Kops scenario this month as a fairly normal freezing rain event first caused two LRT trains to stall late at night on January 4, completely blocking both tracks of the LRT. This meant that ice started accumulating on the overhead power system wires because the trains weren’t running.

Then, an attempt to move the trains and to remove the ice made the situation much worse by damaging the wires. And then another attempt did more damage. It ended up taking six days to repair everything and get the trains running throughout the system again.

In the meantime, transit users travelling east of uOttawa were forced onto inadequate R1 buses, which left people standing at rush hour and reportedly doubled trip times for some. And those R1 buses had to come from somewhere: we don’t know how many buses were reallocated from local routes to R1, making service worse even for those who only use buses. I saw notices for at least two runs of route 11 being cancelled on one morning, directly affecting Centretowners.

This latest foulup exposes endemic problems with OC Transpo: lack of communication to users, incompetence of maintenance staff, and lack of the ability to handle what should have been an expected weather situation in Ottawa. There are also continuing concerns that the design of the LRT line between Hurdman and Tremblay is deficient. The fact that any fixes and communication must work through extra layers of management because the LRT is run through a public-private partnership (P3) just makes it worse.

It also exposes a more general problem with how our transit system is planned. Too many routes were rejigged in 2019 to begin or end at the LRT. Obviously, this would apply to former Transitway routes. But why to local routes like the 14?

Ottawa needs a more resilient transit system that doesn’t pack up every time the LRT has problems, and an important step to doing that is to provide alternate E-W routes covering arterials south of the LRT: improving service on the 85 (Carling) and the 88 (Baseline), restoring the 14 to serve the Civic Hospital, and bringing back the crosstown 101 (Queensway/Carling), for example.

We might hope to be able to learn more and discuss these issues with city councillors at the city Transit Commission and the new LRT oversight committee. But the Transit Commission’s first meeting is still scheduled for February 8, and the LRT oversight committee has no meetings scheduled. Surely a six-day partial shutdown would justify an emergency meeting, but not in this city.

With a looming climate crisis, with federal civil servants returning to the office part-time, with everyone’s budgets stretched and gas prices still high, transit should be a solution. But the reliability of Ottawa’s transit system has become a joke.

And fares are another frustration

For that unreliable service, we’re paying substantially more than Toronto, even after its fare increase this month: $3.75 versus $3.35. And Ottawa can expect another two percent fare increase this year.

With civil servants only working two to three days a week in the office, is it also time for OC Transpo to look at new fare structures in order to stay competitive? That monthly pass doesn’t look nearly as useful for only part-time travel to work.

Perhaps Transpo should look at an option used in other cities where one is charged per ride up to a maximum per month, and then further rides after that are free. At least that would encourage people to ride transit.