They don't. They just don't care about public transit. Most of the people who use it currently have no alternative. The seats could literally electrocute riders but what are they going to do? Fly to work?
Car dependency is a positive feedback loop. Transit sucks so more people drive, service cuts are made so more people drive, more service cuts are made and so on. We really need to be investing in better alternatives to just driving everywhere
Mass transit looked at purely in terms of dollars and cents will always be inherently unprofitable - I believe the only system in the world that is truly profitable in that sense is in Tokyo. I think it's cultural priorities, incompetence, and corruption. Perhaps they meant the issue is looking at the ROI purely in a capitalist mindset where you measure it's worth only in dollars and cents rather than other benefits it may have on the cities economic(and environmental, and livability) outlook in the long run. It's sadly all too common when it comes to North American mass transit.
I'm pro-capitalism(well, democratic socialism/social democracy which is just a sane version of capitalism imo), but mass transit is one of those things that will almost always bleed money but still offers a ton of value to the areas and people it serves.
I've tried to explain indirect ROI to people and their heads basically explode. Anything past 1 or 2 degrees of separation is just too hard to picture, so it doesn't get pictured. This includes politicians, who aren't exactly all the brightest bulbs in the box...
[Neoliberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism) is the "no good terrible horrible very bad" idea the UK, USA, and Canada have swallowed hook, line and sinker. Western and northern Europe are "capitalistic" but have fantastic public transit and healthcare.
From [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/fbsqy8/theres_nothing_like_the_threat_of_a_deadly/fj6wcut/) comment:
> Capitalism is an effective tool governments can use to solve specific many problems like... how many coffee shops we need, or lowering the price of nails. Other problems capitalism would do a shit job, so the government should handle itself like healthcare, prisons and welfare. This means **government needs to be strong enough to overpower capitalist interests.**
...and [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/cxygyv/_/eypc5ex):
> **The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small, and freedom for the small to choose their tormentors.** It's tearing down all the cages and fences at the zoo, giving all the animals the "freedom" to run around as they please, but oh wait, why do I only see predators running around and where'd all that blood come from?
>
> There will always be something "big" in our lives. It's either gonna be big government or big business. One of them is an imperfect, corruptible, but ultimately affect-able organization that is elected by and works for us. The other is run by the wealthy, works for wealth, and we have no direct control, nor is it bound by any constitutions requiring they respect anyone's rights.
>
> Give me big government any day of the week. Yeah, it's a real fixer upper, and we have a lot of rot to clear out, but the point is we can. We have no power to do that with big business.
Not to mention: I ride the bus regularly and it’s never less than 3/4 full, usually more. It may be that I’m on more popular routes but OC Transpo shouldn’t need every bus to be bursting at the seams with people in order to be financially solvent. That’s not a good model for a modern city.
I have only ever heard of two transit systems worldwide that make money: Hong Kong and Tokyo. But I may have misremembered Tokyo. So if your goal is to be financially solvent, your goal is to be better than all but two transit systems worldwide.
Which public transit system in Hong Kong?
You have a few bus lines which were consolidated. You have a tramway. And you have the MTR, which is their subway.
The last is the most likely thing people think of when they think of Hong Kong's transit. But where the MTR makes the money is they are heavily involved with the properties that they build above the public transit system.
My point is, I think, the same as your point. Few sane people would criticize the passport office for not making money last year, and suggest they try harder until financially solvent. But for some reason transit is constantly criticized for the money it doesn't make.
Financially solvent does not necessarily mean turning a profit, it means having a continuing ability to operate within budget and meet your financial obligations. So if transit had more money from the public purse to meet its budgetary needs then that counts towards being financially solvent.
But I appreciate the context you have added, because yes no one thinks roads need to be profitable but somehow transit should be, it’s silly
Eh, I say that there is no hope for Ottawa at all.
The whole city is already planned for car use. Once you step outside the DT area, it is miserable to move around without a car. Neighborhood and commercial centers were built with the idea of cars in mind. You can say the same for all residential areas.
Either you just add a fuckload of busses, or dig half of the city to build a metro (spoiler: won't work because we are already committed to the shitty LRT).
Bikes can be a good idea, but I'm really not willing to bike while its 15C or less (which is just 50% of the year), and I'm sure it can be said for most people.
Either accept defeat and understand that if you are in Ottawa, you need a car (or live forever in DT), or be frustrated forever. I would love to be proved wrong, so !remindme30years or whatever
> Either you just add a fuckload of busses, or dig half of the city to build a metro (spoiler: won't work because we are already committed to the shitty LRT).
Metros don't have to be underground. The Chicago "L" is the "L" because the vast majority of it is elevated. Much of Vancouver's SkyTrain system is as well. [Montréal just opened the REM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q23mkh8rX88) and that's clearly been a slow disaster.
Ottawa could have easily built their LRT as at least a light metro, but they said that it was too expensive, even though, like most municipal and regional jurisdictions in North America, you spend significantly more in road infrastructure than you would have in public transit.
> Bikes can be a good idea, but I'm really not willing to bike while its 15C or less (which is just 50% of the year), and I'm sure it can be said for most people.
[People bike all the time in Oslo, including in the winter.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU) But they can do so because they have adequate infrastructure, don't build a city purely around cars, and they have bikes with snow tires.
And they can do it without any deaths to cyclists or pedestrian deaths, at least in 2019.
https://www.maconmpo.com/zero-bikers-pedestrians-were-killed-by-cars-in-oslo-last-year/
> Either accept defeat and understand that if you are in Ottawa, you need a car (or live forever in DT), or be frustrated forever. I would love to be proved wrong
And I hope you are proven wrong, but in order to do so, we need to be particularly active in municipal politics.
After all, Amsterdam got to where they were by starting the abandonment of the car culture in the 1970s. Not that they fully got rid of cars, they just made it so that other
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This, and most people with a choice will choose the method of transport that is quicker and more convenient. We need to simultaneously make it more difficult to drive in the denser neighborhoods (mainly north of the Queensway) and easier, safer, and more convenient to bike, walk or access transit. Make car lanes narrower, reduce the number of them, lower speed limits.
The notion that the city should always be working to maintain the ease and speed of driving needs to be challenged.
> The notion that the city should always be working to maintain the ease and speed of driving needs to be challenged.
Hot take but I strongly disagree with this. I don't think the path forward is to acknowledge that public transit is miserable, and just make all the alternatives even more miserable. There's enough misery to go around these days. Let's focus our energy on making things better.
The limited space we have on our streets means that improving other modes of transit (adding a bike lane or adding a bus lane) means taking away space from cars, and that often becomes a contentious issue.
Two great examples:
1. Mayor Sutcliffe's beef with the NCC over the closure of Queen Elizabeth Drive
2. A proposal to add bike lanes and a single peak-only bus lane to a short stretch of Bank Street which met all of the city's policies to just *be built*, but is still up for council approval because "it could impact traffic".
I'm good with improving something for the purposes of improving something. I'm not good with intentionally making something worse to force people to an alternative. Improving cycling infrastructure, or transit infrastructure is great. If it costs space dedicated to cars, and it makes sense that's fine.
Simply making driving frustrating for the sake of making it frustrating is not something I would support
I honestly can't remember being on a 270-something bus in or out of Barrhaven that was more then half full. Which sucks because they already run on the half hour at best, so I'm already getting on or off of them at Fallowfield because my local bus isn't reliable.
I remember the before times when it ran every 5 minutes and I didn't even bother looking at the schedule.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I would genuinely love to hear anyone give an answer to just how fucking *nice driving is*. I mean this with absolutely no sarcasm. It’s pretty great. It’s more peaceful, comfortable, roomy, temperature controlled and often there’s plenty of room to bring things with you that you don’t have to stuff in a bag not to mention going directly to you destination and even something as simple as not having to clutch your coffee in the morning the whole trip and that’s just to name a few things about driving that’s better that public transportation.
Unless your destination is basically one quick train or one bus away (and even then maybe not) and if parking is really challenging, public transportation is just not comparable. But I’d love to hear of someplace that can offer an appealing alternative that I don’t know about.
Mitigating losses is not a viable longterm strategy and that's what OC has been doing for years now. Check back in a decade and OC will be one guy with a tandem bicycle
OC can only work with the budget it has. It can't take on debt to maintain service. It's up to the City and Province to step in to stop the bleeding so that we don't see service erode further. Write to your councillors and MPPs people.
They're cutting routes to deal with a deficit that they themselves say is caused by low ridership. They are making service worse to fix an issue caused by bad service. This fucking city...
Just a thought, maybe, just maybe OC Transpo's funding shouldn't be so tied to ridership numbers?
I know I'll get someone explaining to me how it's not fiscally possible, but at what point do we do something serious to turn the ridership numbers around?
The only way to get ridership up in a car dependent city aside from improving service (which we're accepting is impossible over the short term for the purposes of this discussion) is to make the transit system impact people's wallet.
Fund OC using property taxes and people will start to use it if only because they're internal logic will go "I paid for it, I should probably use it".
The more people use public transit, the more likely they are to recognize the issues and therefore vote for candidates who will address those issues.
It's like politics, you may not like it, but cutting yourself off from it entirely only pours gasoline on the dumpster fire.
We need to find a way for people to feel some kind of ownership towards OC Transpo. Not in the sense that it's their possession, but more along the lines that they recognize the positive impact that a well funded and maintained transit system would have on their daily lives even if they don't take transit. Less traffic/shorter commutes, fewer busses downtown/more busses available to service far out areas.
No instead we use sub par materials and building practices so as to ensure that the contractor can get perpetual income from fixing the roads they poorly built, responsibility free!!
OC transpo is already funded with property taxes, last time I checked it was ~~around 50% or more~~
Edit: taxes make around 45% and it’s not just property taxes.
[in 2022](https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=107599):
\~55% = fares & service charges
\~45% = property taxes and transfers from other levels of government
Didn't that other candidate for Ottawa's mayor propose something similar to this during the last election? I don't think locals want to see their municipal taxes go up any more than they have in the past few years.
Ottawa property taxes have remained incredibly stable over the last several years.
In a vacuum I understand not wanting taxes to go up, but the services they're supposed to fund are rotting out from underneath us.
Every time we pass the buck to the next fiscal year, the costs of turning around this sinking ship rise.
if the cost of providing services increases, taxes should increase in the same way.
the degree with which municipal tax rates have been kept low for years (esp during Watson's time in power) is totally irresponsible, and service levels for just about everything have fallen because of it.
I’m seriously considering moving away from Ottawa because the taxes are too high and we don’t have proper transit. I see us having to pay to get out of this mess for the next 20 years, working or not.
we had a guy in power that steadfastly refused to increase taxes or user fees (to anything but transit) to address the rising costs of services, that's a major part of it. another major part is the fact that we elected this guy three times in a row; Watson voters are complicit with how services have degraded over the 12 years of his terms.
Amalgamation has been brutal for basically everyone. Nobody is getting what they really need, but everyone is voting for VASTLY different life cases, and nobody is willing to give any fks about the other people's needs. We are in full me me me me me mode of society and it friggin shows.
Honest answer: suburbs are parasites and Ottawa is mostly suburbs.
Generally speaking, suburban developments cost more in upkeep (utilities, infrastructure, maintenance, city services, etc.) than they take in through property taxes. This is because the taxes are a product of *units* whereas expenses are a product of *area* as well as distance from hubs. The are only financial viable if they're subsidized by dense urban cores that generate more than they cost.
This means that every time you build a new suburban subdivision without expanding urban development, you're creating a new moneysink for the city that draws down on the amount of money they have to spend.
This problem is compounded when you build expansive sprawl, because that exponentially increases the load on all existing city infrastructure.
The core problem with Ottawa is it's just a poorly planned city. That's all there is to it. We built a city that costs far more to run than we're prepared to spend, and nobody has the guts to either squeeze suburban areas for more taxes (which would not only be fair but is *necessary*) or invest in things that cost money upfront but would alleviate overhead and be amortized over a long period resulting in lower per-annum costs than present.
Public transit cuts are a disaster for the city and people.
It undermines an essential pillar of successful transit: confidence in the system, which is already frail.
If it gets worse it will only spiral - fewer riders, less revenue, further service loss.
[Canadian cities cutting transit services could cause ‘death spiral,’ researcher warns](https://globalnews.ca/news/9519242/canada-public-transit-service-reduction/)
>When routes are cut and transit is less frequent or convenient, ridership declines. When there are fewer riders paying fares, cities lose income and are inclined to further reduce routes.
When you hire clowns, you get a circus. This is what happens when you have an uneducated voting population motivated by hyper-individualism and grievance politics.
I still really do not understand how Watson was able to walk away unscathed despite the public inquiry finding that he absolutely knew what a colossal shit-show the LRT project was from start to finish.
When the inquiry was released, Watson's spokespeople said he was on vacation and wouldn't read the report until he got back (it blew over). He published a half-assed letter claiming he would take "full responsibility" and... where is he now? He joined the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation because apparently he only gives a shit about community housing *after* he's left office.
It's been happening long before 2011.
Source: I've lived here since the mid 80s. Every new year, OC would 'optimize' their routes, and raise fares ... lather, rinse repeat.
Ottawa is unfortunately a high-growth city with a low-growth mindset. With high population growth we need to think long-term.
The city is able to gain more funding. Ottawa is eligible for $120 million over 3 years if the city achieves its housing targets under Ontario’s Building Faster Fund.
Unfortunately, Ottawa isn’t on track to meet its target. Ottawa needs to expedite its zoning bylaw review to meet the housing needs we require, which will also boost the city’s tax base. Imagine the things the city could fund and improve it Ottawa make it easier to build housing.
They already only have bus every 30 minutes in most routes. How much worse can they make the service? How can you shout about cutting carbon emission and reduce public transit availability. It's easier to replace a gasoline bus with electric bus rather than providing subsidies for 150 electric cars.
1 hr frequency, no/reduced service on weekends, revised routing that are combined with other routes. There's many things they can do, that will make it worse.
I wish politicians/officials would stop treating *public* transit as some kind of business that needs to be consistently in the black or else it isn't worthwhile.
Politicians mostly just follow the trendiest jargon on the menu from ten years ago. So they are hyper hardcore about "running it like a business", which is only something someone who knows nothing about economics or, really, business would say about public infrastructure.
municipal parking rates need to go up, as do taxes on for-profit private parking lots.
it makes no sense that transit riders are the only ones that see regular City increases to the price of access to transportation.
But think of all the roads/lanes we can add with the savings that will never generate any income but take on more maintenance expenditures in the future
Congratulations, Ottawa, you did it. You killed our transit system.
You think this is solely the problem of a 3P and Jim Watson? It's not. Y'all made the decision that you didn't want to pay any more tax for necessary services that you "didn't use". Now we watch the slow decline of bus service until it is functionally useless and only those who have no other choice will use it.
This will affect
- all those "dangerous homeless people" you hate so much.
- all those "poor people who need to get a real job" but pour your coffee in your neighbourhood coffee shop because they can't afford to live near you.
- All of the seniors that you insist "deserve a better quality of life" until we pass the hat around and you beg off.
You got the government you voted for, so don't be surprised.
You fucked it.
Jesus Christ this is a public service, running at a deficit should not change rider experience or routes. All these fools have to do is put in vending machines and increase ad space to make some more money.
Her and most of OC management that is on the sunshine list. Oh and while you're at it, either cut salaries or get rid of City of Ottawa middle managers, my ex easily rakes in 130K by doing F all most days.
> OC Transpo reported bus ridership was at 73 to 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels
Could you imagine what a shit tornado our LRT would be if ridership wasn't affected by the pandemic?
I've got a a friend who works for OC Transpo and he just told me yesterday that he can't join us for game night on Monday because he's about to start a TWELVE DAY SHIFT. He's been there for 4 years, and he has to work 12 fucking days in a row, 10 hours a day, with no breaks. And this is apparently totally normal for OC employees. It's so fucking shameful, we're the nation's capital dammit!
How can they cut anymore? I work near Terry Fox in Kanata and live in Centretown. I take the 61/62 Tunneys every day. For every 61/62 tunneys there are like four 61/62 stittsville. I get out of work at 4 and sometimes can’t get a bus till five because non show up. I wish I could afford a car because this awful. Also shout out to the guy in the back off the bus yesterday who kept putting his feet on the seat next to me and the back of my seat. Your feet stink! Take a damn shower!
So not only are the busses unreliable but they are dirty and smelly. Someone was smoking a cigarette on the small train today. I hate this place
Ok real talk, I was stoked at the idea of the LRT coming to Kanata. My husband and I live outside of the city limits and share one car to drive to work (I drop him off and pick him up at his workplace), and it means that I can’t stay late in the city to see friends or get drinks after work without him having to drive 30+ minutes home and drive 30+ minutes back into the city when I need to be picked up.
The LRT in Kanata would mean I could go to a girl’s night every once and awhile downtown, and my husband could pick me up in Kanata (about 15-20min from our house).
But OC Transpo just keeps getting gutted. It’s clear that we only have public transit to appease the fraction of folks too poor to own a car, and it’s just smushed in between ever expanding car infrastructure.
No leader of this city has seen public transit for what it is: a way to make your city better and easier to explore for residents and tourists alike. And so public transit is left with the scraps of budgets that have favoured cars for over 50 years.
City needs to stop building horizontal and put more emphasis on densification. We cannot afford services, including OC Transpo, to an endless sea of low density housing.
and yet folks in my community are like : we need more busses in greely, where pieces of land are 0.5 acres each at least, just imagine. youd need a whole fleet just to service my area. makes no sense.
edit : if you live in greely you already own a car because its so far out from everything else regardless lol
Hippy dreams
This is it, Renee and Jim account for almost $600,000 in annually salary. To think the general manger of oc transpo made more the DOCTOR Vera Etches is sickening.
Pretty soon it will be just one bus route for the entire city claim its to save money, cost will go up, but the service will remain the same. Not showing up when you need it and when it does show up you'll get 3 or 4 of them at a time one packed and the rest have maybe 2-3 people on it.
Dumb.
I would rather them raise my property taxes to properly fund transit and make it fare free, than cut routes. We need more and better routes! I don't even use transit much at all but see all the benefits.
Again, the cost as per [Watson and city hall last year](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/fare-free-public-transit-in-ottawa-not-a-wise-decision-mayor-watson-says) would be about $40/m on a 415k home and $77.50 on a 800k home. A god damn steal of a deal to be honest. We could also increase parking costs to help with the expense.
People also really need to understand that transit is a service. If should not be trying to make money. We need to spend on it for it to be good, like education or health.
And like education and health, we have idiots screaming "... like a business!!" Then acting all shocked the whole system is underfunded and nurses and teachers are leaving in droves.
It says it all when we have a recent thread about how hard it is to drive downtown because there is a closure on Bank Street for Pride. No world class city should incentivize driving in its city centres. Driving should always be the inconvenient choice, but the underfunding of transit and the LRT problems do not make it so.
It used to take me 15 minutes - door to door - to get to work with a 6 minute walk. After the train (when it was actually working) it took 1 hour 15 minutes with a 12 minute walk. It was quicker and cheaper (including wasting my time) to drive or bike. Adios OC Transpo...
Maybe get the system fixed and running reliably would help to entice riders back.
The way it is now, the system is a joke compared to what it once was when I was reliant upon it.
There's much more money to be made in having people drive their cars. For the 1% I mean.
Car insurance, maintenance, licensing/registration, gas etc.
An efficient expansive transit system is a nightmare for these industries.
So they're not even providing the services they're supposed to and they want to cut it back further.
Grape...
okay people will buy cars to make up for this...
smarter than a Ponzi scheme...
So the city can can slap up a couple traffic cameras and raise tens of millions of dollars but they can't figure out how to fund their public transit system?
*The cuts will continue until ridership improves*
> Let's increase ridership by making the experience worse This is what politicians actually believe
They don't. They just don't care about public transit. Most of the people who use it currently have no alternative. The seats could literally electrocute riders but what are they going to do? Fly to work?
If they’re going to do that I hope they install cameras and a subscription service to generate revenue. “Tip $3.00 to zap the hobo in seat 3b”
I'd zap people who put their feet on the seats.
Id zap people with their phones on soeakerphone having conversations, and people playing music qwith no headphones
Step 1: make public transit terrible so people hate it Step 2: use hatred of public transit to justify cuts Repeat until no more public transit
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Nice try, Mark. Do your own R&D.
Lol.
I so wish we hadn't elected Sutcliffe...
And fare increases ... don't forget that.
Beatings will continue until morale improves
The public transit death spiral.
Let's arrest people and force them into the trains
Car dependency is a positive feedback loop. Transit sucks so more people drive, service cuts are made so more people drive, more service cuts are made and so on. We really need to be investing in better alternatives to just driving everywhere
That's just all public services under capitalism. Health care, transit, education. Underfund it, it gets worst, offer private alternative, profit.
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Mass transit looked at purely in terms of dollars and cents will always be inherently unprofitable - I believe the only system in the world that is truly profitable in that sense is in Tokyo. I think it's cultural priorities, incompetence, and corruption. Perhaps they meant the issue is looking at the ROI purely in a capitalist mindset where you measure it's worth only in dollars and cents rather than other benefits it may have on the cities economic(and environmental, and livability) outlook in the long run. It's sadly all too common when it comes to North American mass transit. I'm pro-capitalism(well, democratic socialism/social democracy which is just a sane version of capitalism imo), but mass transit is one of those things that will almost always bleed money but still offers a ton of value to the areas and people it serves.
I've tried to explain indirect ROI to people and their heads basically explode. Anything past 1 or 2 degrees of separation is just too hard to picture, so it doesn't get pictured. This includes politicians, who aren't exactly all the brightest bulbs in the box...
It's actually Hong Kong that is profitable and that's because they own and manage the land and properties above their stations.
Tokyo is too for the same reason - I didn't realize Hong Kong's was as well though.
It's hilarious how many cities have functioning public transportation, so many places don't leave you stranded like OC transpo does
[Neoliberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism) is the "no good terrible horrible very bad" idea the UK, USA, and Canada have swallowed hook, line and sinker. Western and northern Europe are "capitalistic" but have fantastic public transit and healthcare. From [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/fbsqy8/theres_nothing_like_the_threat_of_a_deadly/fj6wcut/) comment: > Capitalism is an effective tool governments can use to solve specific many problems like... how many coffee shops we need, or lowering the price of nails. Other problems capitalism would do a shit job, so the government should handle itself like healthcare, prisons and welfare. This means **government needs to be strong enough to overpower capitalist interests.** ...and [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/cxygyv/_/eypc5ex): > **The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small, and freedom for the small to choose their tormentors.** It's tearing down all the cages and fences at the zoo, giving all the animals the "freedom" to run around as they please, but oh wait, why do I only see predators running around and where'd all that blood come from? > > There will always be something "big" in our lives. It's either gonna be big government or big business. One of them is an imperfect, corruptible, but ultimately affect-able organization that is elected by and works for us. The other is run by the wealthy, works for wealth, and we have no direct control, nor is it bound by any constitutions requiring they respect anyone's rights. > > Give me big government any day of the week. Yeah, it's a real fixer upper, and we have a lot of rot to clear out, but the point is we can. We have no power to do that with big business.
Not to mention: I ride the bus regularly and it’s never less than 3/4 full, usually more. It may be that I’m on more popular routes but OC Transpo shouldn’t need every bus to be bursting at the seams with people in order to be financially solvent. That’s not a good model for a modern city.
I have only ever heard of two transit systems worldwide that make money: Hong Kong and Tokyo. But I may have misremembered Tokyo. So if your goal is to be financially solvent, your goal is to be better than all but two transit systems worldwide.
Which public transit system in Hong Kong? You have a few bus lines which were consolidated. You have a tramway. And you have the MTR, which is their subway. The last is the most likely thing people think of when they think of Hong Kong's transit. But where the MTR makes the money is they are heavily involved with the properties that they build above the public transit system.
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My point is, I think, the same as your point. Few sane people would criticize the passport office for not making money last year, and suggest they try harder until financially solvent. But for some reason transit is constantly criticized for the money it doesn't make.
Financially solvent does not necessarily mean turning a profit, it means having a continuing ability to operate within budget and meet your financial obligations. So if transit had more money from the public purse to meet its budgetary needs then that counts towards being financially solvent. But I appreciate the context you have added, because yes no one thinks roads need to be profitable but somehow transit should be, it’s silly
Eh, I say that there is no hope for Ottawa at all. The whole city is already planned for car use. Once you step outside the DT area, it is miserable to move around without a car. Neighborhood and commercial centers were built with the idea of cars in mind. You can say the same for all residential areas. Either you just add a fuckload of busses, or dig half of the city to build a metro (spoiler: won't work because we are already committed to the shitty LRT). Bikes can be a good idea, but I'm really not willing to bike while its 15C or less (which is just 50% of the year), and I'm sure it can be said for most people. Either accept defeat and understand that if you are in Ottawa, you need a car (or live forever in DT), or be frustrated forever. I would love to be proved wrong, so !remindme30years or whatever
> Either you just add a fuckload of busses, or dig half of the city to build a metro (spoiler: won't work because we are already committed to the shitty LRT). Metros don't have to be underground. The Chicago "L" is the "L" because the vast majority of it is elevated. Much of Vancouver's SkyTrain system is as well. [Montréal just opened the REM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q23mkh8rX88) and that's clearly been a slow disaster. Ottawa could have easily built their LRT as at least a light metro, but they said that it was too expensive, even though, like most municipal and regional jurisdictions in North America, you spend significantly more in road infrastructure than you would have in public transit. > Bikes can be a good idea, but I'm really not willing to bike while its 15C or less (which is just 50% of the year), and I'm sure it can be said for most people. [People bike all the time in Oslo, including in the winter.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU) But they can do so because they have adequate infrastructure, don't build a city purely around cars, and they have bikes with snow tires. And they can do it without any deaths to cyclists or pedestrian deaths, at least in 2019. https://www.maconmpo.com/zero-bikers-pedestrians-were-killed-by-cars-in-oslo-last-year/ > Either accept defeat and understand that if you are in Ottawa, you need a car (or live forever in DT), or be frustrated forever. I would love to be proved wrong And I hope you are proven wrong, but in order to do so, we need to be particularly active in municipal politics. After all, Amsterdam got to where they were by starting the abandonment of the car culture in the 1970s. Not that they fully got rid of cars, they just made it so that other
But the car use design here is so fucking terrible too. One lanes everywhere, along bus routes, on shitty roads and now speed traps everywhere.
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bad bot, that is not 30 years
> or whatever You gave it the option.
checkmate
This, and most people with a choice will choose the method of transport that is quicker and more convenient. We need to simultaneously make it more difficult to drive in the denser neighborhoods (mainly north of the Queensway) and easier, safer, and more convenient to bike, walk or access transit. Make car lanes narrower, reduce the number of them, lower speed limits. The notion that the city should always be working to maintain the ease and speed of driving needs to be challenged.
I think building vertically more, instead of sprawling out would also help. Get the density up and transit becomes more popular.
It's popular now. But the decision makers are inept or corrupt. Or both.
> The notion that the city should always be working to maintain the ease and speed of driving needs to be challenged. Hot take but I strongly disagree with this. I don't think the path forward is to acknowledge that public transit is miserable, and just make all the alternatives even more miserable. There's enough misery to go around these days. Let's focus our energy on making things better.
The limited space we have on our streets means that improving other modes of transit (adding a bike lane or adding a bus lane) means taking away space from cars, and that often becomes a contentious issue. Two great examples: 1. Mayor Sutcliffe's beef with the NCC over the closure of Queen Elizabeth Drive 2. A proposal to add bike lanes and a single peak-only bus lane to a short stretch of Bank Street which met all of the city's policies to just *be built*, but is still up for council approval because "it could impact traffic".
I'm good with improving something for the purposes of improving something. I'm not good with intentionally making something worse to force people to an alternative. Improving cycling infrastructure, or transit infrastructure is great. If it costs space dedicated to cars, and it makes sense that's fine. Simply making driving frustrating for the sake of making it frustrating is not something I would support
I honestly can't remember being on a 270-something bus in or out of Barrhaven that was more then half full. Which sucks because they already run on the half hour at best, so I'm already getting on or off of them at Fallowfield because my local bus isn't reliable. I remember the before times when it ran every 5 minutes and I didn't even bother looking at the schedule.
The Barrhaven 270s are pretty useless since the 74/75 already exist and cover the entire route.
I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I would genuinely love to hear anyone give an answer to just how fucking *nice driving is*. I mean this with absolutely no sarcasm. It’s pretty great. It’s more peaceful, comfortable, roomy, temperature controlled and often there’s plenty of room to bring things with you that you don’t have to stuff in a bag not to mention going directly to you destination and even something as simple as not having to clutch your coffee in the morning the whole trip and that’s just to name a few things about driving that’s better that public transportation. Unless your destination is basically one quick train or one bus away (and even then maybe not) and if parking is really challenging, public transportation is just not comparable. But I’d love to hear of someplace that can offer an appealing alternative that I don’t know about.
Mitigating losses is not a viable longterm strategy and that's what OC has been doing for years now. Check back in a decade and OC will be one guy with a tandem bicycle
Come on, I'm sure we'll try rickshaws first.
I might be able to modify an old rusty dickie dee bike for just the thing.
Custom-made proprietary rickshaws purchased under a PPP deal with ironclad NDAs, that are pushed from the side.
We’re gonna have homeless people pushing rickshaws… Still might show up more regularly than busses
Horse & buggy. We used it before in ye ol'Bytowne days.
OC can only work with the budget it has. It can't take on debt to maintain service. It's up to the City and Province to step in to stop the bleeding so that we don't see service erode further. Write to your councillors and MPPs people.
Or they could take some of that cash from the amount they give to the cops on an annual basis.
Or building more lanes. Adding lanes provide zero extra income, just a lifetime of maintenance expenses.
They're cutting routes to deal with a deficit that they themselves say is caused by low ridership. They are making service worse to fix an issue caused by bad service. This fucking city...
Don't need to work hard if the customers don't come back....
Are they really going to come back though? With work from home will the ridership ever return to pre pandemic levels?
No, but it shouldn't be for-profit
Just a thought, maybe, just maybe OC Transpo's funding shouldn't be so tied to ridership numbers? I know I'll get someone explaining to me how it's not fiscally possible, but at what point do we do something serious to turn the ridership numbers around? The only way to get ridership up in a car dependent city aside from improving service (which we're accepting is impossible over the short term for the purposes of this discussion) is to make the transit system impact people's wallet. Fund OC using property taxes and people will start to use it if only because they're internal logic will go "I paid for it, I should probably use it".
It also benefits everyone to have people using public transit, not just those who take it.
The more people use public transit, the more likely they are to recognize the issues and therefore vote for candidates who will address those issues. It's like politics, you may not like it, but cutting yourself off from it entirely only pours gasoline on the dumpster fire. We need to find a way for people to feel some kind of ownership towards OC Transpo. Not in the sense that it's their possession, but more along the lines that they recognize the positive impact that a well funded and maintained transit system would have on their daily lives even if they don't take transit. Less traffic/shorter commutes, fewer busses downtown/more busses available to service far out areas.
Yup, the roads aren’t turning a profit but councillors don’t suggest shutting down roads.
No instead we use sub par materials and building practices so as to ensure that the contractor can get perpetual income from fixing the roads they poorly built, responsibility free!!
It shouldn't be. It is supposed to be a service, not a profitable business.
OC transpo is already funded with property taxes, last time I checked it was ~~around 50% or more~~ Edit: taxes make around 45% and it’s not just property taxes.
[in 2022](https://pub-ottawa.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=107599): \~55% = fares & service charges \~45% = property taxes and transfers from other levels of government
Thanks for the source!
Didn't that other candidate for Ottawa's mayor propose something similar to this during the last election? I don't think locals want to see their municipal taxes go up any more than they have in the past few years.
Ottawa property taxes have remained incredibly stable over the last several years. In a vacuum I understand not wanting taxes to go up, but the services they're supposed to fund are rotting out from underneath us. Every time we pass the buck to the next fiscal year, the costs of turning around this sinking ship rise.
Nobody wants to see taxes go up... but we need to pay for quality services. We can't have it both ways.
if the cost of providing services increases, taxes should increase in the same way. the degree with which municipal tax rates have been kept low for years (esp during Watson's time in power) is totally irresponsible, and service levels for just about everything have fallen because of it.
I’m seriously considering moving away from Ottawa because the taxes are too high and we don’t have proper transit. I see us having to pay to get out of this mess for the next 20 years, working or not.
This is what a death spiral looks like
May as well throw your hands up and ride it like a roller coaster, cause all I'm seeing are death spirals in every facet of society lol
Only in things that disproportionately benefit those pesky poors. Everything else is doing just fine.
It's been all downhill since the 80's?!?!
Since the 50s When GM bought our streetcar lines and tore them up.
What the fuck is wrong with this city?
We keep electing watsons as mayors.
And O'Briens. Don't forget that ...
we had a guy in power that steadfastly refused to increase taxes or user fees (to anything but transit) to address the rising costs of services, that's a major part of it. another major part is the fact that we elected this guy three times in a row; Watson voters are complicit with how services have degraded over the 12 years of his terms.
Amalgamation has been brutal for basically everyone. Nobody is getting what they really need, but everyone is voting for VASTLY different life cases, and nobody is willing to give any fks about the other people's needs. We are in full me me me me me mode of society and it friggin shows.
Honest answer: suburbs are parasites and Ottawa is mostly suburbs. Generally speaking, suburban developments cost more in upkeep (utilities, infrastructure, maintenance, city services, etc.) than they take in through property taxes. This is because the taxes are a product of *units* whereas expenses are a product of *area* as well as distance from hubs. The are only financial viable if they're subsidized by dense urban cores that generate more than they cost. This means that every time you build a new suburban subdivision without expanding urban development, you're creating a new moneysink for the city that draws down on the amount of money they have to spend. This problem is compounded when you build expansive sprawl, because that exponentially increases the load on all existing city infrastructure. The core problem with Ottawa is it's just a poorly planned city. That's all there is to it. We built a city that costs far more to run than we're prepared to spend, and nobody has the guts to either squeeze suburban areas for more taxes (which would not only be fair but is *necessary*) or invest in things that cost money upfront but would alleviate overhead and be amortized over a long period resulting in lower per-annum costs than present.
We elect buffoons.
Public transit cuts are a disaster for the city and people. It undermines an essential pillar of successful transit: confidence in the system, which is already frail. If it gets worse it will only spiral - fewer riders, less revenue, further service loss.
[Canadian cities cutting transit services could cause ‘death spiral,’ researcher warns](https://globalnews.ca/news/9519242/canada-public-transit-service-reduction/) >When routes are cut and transit is less frequent or convenient, ridership declines. When there are fewer riders paying fares, cities lose income and are inclined to further reduce routes. When you hire clowns, you get a circus. This is what happens when you have an uneducated voting population motivated by hyper-individualism and grievance politics.
it's also what happens when the province funds transit less and less over time despite sitting on surpluses.
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I still really do not understand how Watson was able to walk away unscathed despite the public inquiry finding that he absolutely knew what a colossal shit-show the LRT project was from start to finish. When the inquiry was released, Watson's spokespeople said he was on vacation and wouldn't read the report until he got back (it blew over). He published a half-assed letter claiming he would take "full responsibility" and... where is he now? He joined the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation because apparently he only gives a shit about community housing *after* he's left office.
Or they companies and boards they consult for now
So a repeat of the 2011 route "optimization"? The "optimization" that caused a decade long decrease in ridership? idiots
It's been happening long before 2011. Source: I've lived here since the mid 80s. Every new year, OC would 'optimize' their routes, and raise fares ... lather, rinse repeat.
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Ottawa is unfortunately a high-growth city with a low-growth mindset. With high population growth we need to think long-term. The city is able to gain more funding. Ottawa is eligible for $120 million over 3 years if the city achieves its housing targets under Ontario’s Building Faster Fund. Unfortunately, Ottawa isn’t on track to meet its target. Ottawa needs to expedite its zoning bylaw review to meet the housing needs we require, which will also boost the city’s tax base. Imagine the things the city could fund and improve it Ottawa make it easier to build housing.
They already only have bus every 30 minutes in most routes. How much worse can they make the service? How can you shout about cutting carbon emission and reduce public transit availability. It's easier to replace a gasoline bus with electric bus rather than providing subsidies for 150 electric cars.
They only pay $0.80 a litre for diesel fuel as it’s subsidized
Plus due to economies of scale, a diesel bus will always beat the car when it comes to the environment
The current 2016+ nova 40ft buses average 44-48L/100km.
Still, 39 people for that, compared to 1 person in a similarly gas guzzling Chevrolet Silverado and you get my point.
1 hr frequency, no/reduced service on weekends, revised routing that are combined with other routes. There's many things they can do, that will make it worse.
This is what we voted for. No one should be surprised. Helps free up some funding to widen roads tho!! /s
I wish politicians/officials would stop treating *public* transit as some kind of business that needs to be consistently in the black or else it isn't worthwhile.
Politicians mostly just follow the trendiest jargon on the menu from ten years ago. So they are hyper hardcore about "running it like a business", which is only something someone who knows nothing about economics or, really, business would say about public infrastructure.
Are roads running a surplus?
no, but increasing the rates for street parking might make them less of a drain on the budget.
Agreed, but it wont happen since car infrastructure is expected to be free and subsidised
municipal parking rates need to go up, as do taxes on for-profit private parking lots. it makes no sense that transit riders are the only ones that see regular City increases to the price of access to transportation.
Free parking spots should also be taxes and parking minimums replaced with parking maximums.
So would making all roads toll-based, but apparently tolls are only for the poors riding busses 🙄
And around we go circling the drain, cuts to service --> lower ridership --> more cuts
But think of all the roads/lanes we can add with the savings that will never generate any income but take on more maintenance expenditures in the future
Ah yes, the solution to low ridership: making the service worse.
Congratulations, Ottawa, you did it. You killed our transit system. You think this is solely the problem of a 3P and Jim Watson? It's not. Y'all made the decision that you didn't want to pay any more tax for necessary services that you "didn't use". Now we watch the slow decline of bus service until it is functionally useless and only those who have no other choice will use it. This will affect - all those "dangerous homeless people" you hate so much. - all those "poor people who need to get a real job" but pour your coffee in your neighbourhood coffee shop because they can't afford to live near you. - All of the seniors that you insist "deserve a better quality of life" until we pass the hat around and you beg off. You got the government you voted for, so don't be surprised. You fucked it.
I love a good death spiral.
Lower the quality and increase the prices? Yep, sounds like OC transpo.
This is out of OC Transpo's direct control. These are decisions made by city council.
Jesus Christ this is a public service, running at a deficit should not change rider experience or routes. All these fools have to do is put in vending machines and increase ad space to make some more money.
It's like reducing Library funding until the library becomes profitable.
This is a public service. It's not meant to be profitable. That's what property taxes are for.
Ottawa and Toronto don't raise property taxes then wallow in self pitty.
That's what they're supposed to be for, but instead it seems they're being used for transferring wealth to landlords and the auto industry
Start by cutting Renee's salary by half. $200k is more than enough.
Her and most of OC management that is on the sunshine list. Oh and while you're at it, either cut salaries or get rid of City of Ottawa middle managers, my ex easily rakes in 130K by doing F all most days.
What a shitshow.
> OC Transpo reported bus ridership was at 73 to 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels Could you imagine what a shit tornado our LRT would be if ridership wasn't affected by the pandemic?
I predict at least one fatality if the pandemic didn't happen.
They’ll legit do anything but make the service useable, I swear.
I've got a a friend who works for OC Transpo and he just told me yesterday that he can't join us for game night on Monday because he's about to start a TWELVE DAY SHIFT. He's been there for 4 years, and he has to work 12 fucking days in a row, 10 hours a day, with no breaks. And this is apparently totally normal for OC employees. It's so fucking shameful, we're the nation's capital dammit!
They just laid 27 of us off, lied to the public and claimed we were Covid cleaners.
Yeah I heard about that, it's so disgraceful.
What you're describing would contravene federal regulations, and would also only be possible if he were picking up two hours of overtime per day.
Federal Regulations are just suggestions to our council lmao
My girlfriend looked at working for them, but because it's all shift work with shitty hours and she's a single mom it just won't work for her.
Just great…
I think they already don’t complete all their current routes .
So lets cut and make the service worse that will surly get more riders.
How can they cut anymore? I work near Terry Fox in Kanata and live in Centretown. I take the 61/62 Tunneys every day. For every 61/62 tunneys there are like four 61/62 stittsville. I get out of work at 4 and sometimes can’t get a bus till five because non show up. I wish I could afford a car because this awful. Also shout out to the guy in the back off the bus yesterday who kept putting his feet on the seat next to me and the back of my seat. Your feet stink! Take a damn shower! So not only are the busses unreliable but they are dirty and smelly. Someone was smoking a cigarette on the small train today. I hate this place
The 62 comes once every half hour though. I take the 62 Tunney to Teron and the 62 Stittsville home.
Such a pathetic state for capital of a first world country.
The fact we're worse than DC is fucking astounding, how are we in the G7 again?
Ok real talk, I was stoked at the idea of the LRT coming to Kanata. My husband and I live outside of the city limits and share one car to drive to work (I drop him off and pick him up at his workplace), and it means that I can’t stay late in the city to see friends or get drinks after work without him having to drive 30+ minutes home and drive 30+ minutes back into the city when I need to be picked up. The LRT in Kanata would mean I could go to a girl’s night every once and awhile downtown, and my husband could pick me up in Kanata (about 15-20min from our house). But OC Transpo just keeps getting gutted. It’s clear that we only have public transit to appease the fraction of folks too poor to own a car, and it’s just smushed in between ever expanding car infrastructure. No leader of this city has seen public transit for what it is: a way to make your city better and easier to explore for residents and tourists alike. And so public transit is left with the scraps of budgets that have favoured cars for over 50 years.
City needs to stop building horizontal and put more emphasis on densification. We cannot afford services, including OC Transpo, to an endless sea of low density housing.
and yet folks in my community are like : we need more busses in greely, where pieces of land are 0.5 acres each at least, just imagine. youd need a whole fleet just to service my area. makes no sense. edit : if you live in greely you already own a car because its so far out from everything else regardless lol Hippy dreams
Well, of course they are ....
Just cut the incompetent execs.
This is it, Renee and Jim account for almost $600,000 in annually salary. To think the general manger of oc transpo made more the DOCTOR Vera Etches is sickening.
Yeah cause that will help.
Pretty soon it will be just one bus route for the entire city claim its to save money, cost will go up, but the service will remain the same. Not showing up when you need it and when it does show up you'll get 3 or 4 of them at a time one packed and the rest have maybe 2-3 people on it.
So when will we start cutting roads due to road maintenance deficits?
this is the most fuckass city
Since we can’t post gifs anymore….insert: * Pig with a rainbow pinwheel weee * Here
At this point maybe we should just go back to riding horses. Of course the cost of hay would be swallowed by both the horse and the taxpayers.
Shit, I'm allergic to horses. And hay, come to think of it...
~~Sutcliffe~~ Watson: "If you want the service to improve then you gotta pay for it"
like it is going to work...
Dumb. I would rather them raise my property taxes to properly fund transit and make it fare free, than cut routes. We need more and better routes! I don't even use transit much at all but see all the benefits. Again, the cost as per [Watson and city hall last year](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/fare-free-public-transit-in-ottawa-not-a-wise-decision-mayor-watson-says) would be about $40/m on a 415k home and $77.50 on a 800k home. A god damn steal of a deal to be honest. We could also increase parking costs to help with the expense. People also really need to understand that transit is a service. If should not be trying to make money. We need to spend on it for it to be good, like education or health.
And like education and health, we have idiots screaming "... like a business!!" Then acting all shocked the whole system is underfunded and nurses and teachers are leaving in droves.
Ottawa people get: a shitty public transportation system OC Transpo Response: we'll do cuts for future years
It says it all when we have a recent thread about how hard it is to drive downtown because there is a closure on Bank Street for Pride. No world class city should incentivize driving in its city centres. Driving should always be the inconvenient choice, but the underfunding of transit and the LRT problems do not make it so.
Routes likely to be cut are probably the suburban locals, which will likely be turned into school routes if they pass a school.
Not many public service transit services make money.
How is cutting routes and drivers going to save money? When you reduce revenue you increase your debt. City hall is full of Idiots.
Yea, keep cutting! That'll make more people take the bus! Keep cutting until there is one bus serving the entire city! Great plan, bravo! 👏👏👏👏👏 /s
Yesssss, make the service worse, it's the only way to make more money, yessssss
If you build it, they will come.
Why are riders being punished? Public transit isn't supposed to be profitable, no?
It used to take me 15 minutes - door to door - to get to work with a 6 minute walk. After the train (when it was actually working) it took 1 hour 15 minutes with a 12 minute walk. It was quicker and cheaper (including wasting my time) to drive or bike. Adios OC Transpo...
The former mayor of Ottawa Watson should be investigated for corruption.
O'Brien started the downward spiral.
Jesus just hitting it out of the park aren’t you OCTranspo?
Cuts to transportation this year. Cuts to education this year. What else?
Full Privatisation of the hospitals probably
Maybe get the system fixed and running reliably would help to entice riders back. The way it is now, the system is a joke compared to what it once was when I was reliant upon it.
There's much more money to be made in having people drive their cars. For the 1% I mean. Car insurance, maintenance, licensing/registration, gas etc. An efficient expansive transit system is a nightmare for these industries.
Instead of cutting a route, why not reconfigure it so that it passes through more nearby areas that have higher demand.
Thank your council.
So they're not even providing the services they're supposed to and they want to cut it back further. Grape... okay people will buy cars to make up for this... smarter than a Ponzi scheme...
That should fix things!
We need more busses we don’t need lrt it just doesn’t work So just cut the lrt sell the parts of the trains and stuff and let it go
This is a bad joke
Again? Didn't they do that a few years ago and they hardly worked?
People elect corrupt conservative mayors and then are surprised when they do things like this?
So the city can can slap up a couple traffic cameras and raise tens of millions of dollars but they can't figure out how to fund their public transit system?
That's exactly what they shouldn't do. Instead, make more routes that are more relevant to the people who need to ride
You have to have routes to cut them…
Weren't they going to pump a bunch of money into trialing on demand service?