Alayne McGregor
In the last month, I attended two consultation meetings run by OC Transpo on proposed bus route changes for 2024. I came with no expectations and a great deal of cynicism.
OC Transpo is currently facing a substantial deficit which no other level of government has stepped up to help cover. The answer in the past has been to cut service.
I have lived through at least three major revamps of Transpo routes, and the result has generally made my trips less, not more, convenient. The most recent that came with the introduction of light rail was one of the worst.
But with a climate crisis and an affordability crisis, we need a reliable transit service that works. We need to fix OC Transpo.
Constructive suggestions
What really impressed me was how much the citizens at those meetings want to help improve our transit system – despite how OC Transpo continues to treat its riders.
Their constructive suggestions included
- more use of signal priority to improve bus priority when turning at busy intersections;
- short turning a bus when it catches up to another on the same route;
- transit priority lanes on Bank Street;
- longer service hours to allow people to attend later evening events;
- making the fare structure more flexible; and
- fixing the “disappearing bus” problem on GPS.
A repeated concern was missing buses on important connection routes like the 88 on Baseline and the 85 on Carling.
Riders also noted concerns with safety on transit.
Bus grid system required
I told Transpo that it needs to commit to a grid system that includes, but does not completely depend on, the LRT. The latest revamp pushed every route it could to the LRT, even when this made routes less useful.
Instead, I argued, we should make transfers practical by having frequent service on a series of east-west routes: on Somerset, on Gladstone, on Carling, on Baseline, on Montreal Road, and possibly also on Hunt Club
We should restore the former 101 route, which took the Queensway and Carling to go from Bayshore to Orleans and provided an alternative fast route across the city.
We know now that the LRT will be down sometimes even when it’s running properly – as it is this month for maintenance. We should start to build resilience into our transit system so that people can be assured of getting to their destinations in a reasonable time and have options on how they can do that.
I hope Ottawa City Council will commit to a better transit system, rather than just cut again.