News   Apr 19, 2024
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Ottawa Transit Developments

This tweet sort of explains the uphill battle OC Transpo faces. The transitway gave people a single seat ride right from their door to their office for cheap. It just couldn't scale anymore, but taking it away is the biggest source of backlash. Combine it with the still too frequent train troubles and you can see why outer suburb people are especially livid. People are having a hard time with changes that come with getting into big city territory. While traffic is still easy in Ottawa compared to the GTA, it's now quite common to get into traffic jams outside peak hours, which was something unheard of even a decade ago.


A lot of this is because of the relative shortness of Phase 1. Phase 2 will largely solve the issues for Orleans and Kanata (with all of Kanata feeding into Moodie Stn and Orleans set up in a grid pattern), but Barrhaven will still be the odd man out.

The Transitway's biggest shortcoming was that the highest usage corridor also had the lowest capacity of any corridor on the network.
 
A lot of this is because of the relative shortness of Phase 1. Phase 2 will largely solve the issues for Orleans and Kanata (with all of Kanata feeding into Moodie Stn and Orleans set up in a grid pattern), but Barrhaven will still be the odd man out.

The Transitway's biggest shortcoming was that the highest usage corridor also had the lowest capacity of any corridor on the network.
Yes, the plan to build a bus tunnel through downtown was never completed. The expected construction period for the tunnel would have occurred during the Mike Harris 'Commonsense Revolution' years when transit capital spending across Ontario came to a halt. It was never seriously considered once transit spending dried up and rail possibilities came on the scene.
 
There are still service interruptions pretty well every day. Door problems last Friday and Saturday, a train had to be taken out of service on Monday (public urination on board), and a shut down of the east end of the line yesterday afternoon.
 
There are still service interruptions pretty well every day. Door problems last Friday and Saturday, a train had to be taken out of service on Monday (public urination on board), and a shut down of the east end of the line yesterday afternoon.
The public urination one isn't really one I'd count when complaining about reliability, nor the medical emergencies that happen from time to time. I would say major shutdowns are definitely getting farther apart, but we aren't at the level we should be.
 
The reality of this post is that a lot of these issues are unrelated or tangentially related to the signals. Seltrac has a pretty solid record over the years especially on Skytrain.
I never meant it to relate to the signalling system.
 
 
Meanwhile it seems the confed line issues have stabilized greatly. Won't say we're out of the woods, but things are definitely looking sunnier.
Which is now shining the light on the bus system problems and the lack of drivers. Today, the main bus route to Barrhaven had cancelled trips at 2:45, 3:35, 3:45, 4:00, 4:05, 4:15, 4:20, 4:30, 4:45, 4:50, 6:10, 6:15, 6:30 p.m. Looks like they cancelled the last trip on Route 256 this morning, unacceptable.
 
Which is now shining the light on the bus system problems and the lack of drivers. Today, the main bus route to Barrhaven had cancelled trips at 2:45, 3:35, 3:45, 4:00, 4:05, 4:15, 4:20, 4:30, 4:45, 4:50, 6:10, 6:15, 6:30 p.m. Looks like they cancelled the last trip on Route 256 this morning, unacceptable.

Well, yes, there is that dark cloud on the horizon....
 
Why is OC Transpo having trouble matching service to demand?

They are way short on drivers. They kept talking about massive layoffs when the train opened, so people left on their own, and with the year+ delay more people left the they were going to layoff, now they don't have enough drivers to provide the full schedule.
 
They are way short on drivers. They kept talking about massive layoffs when the train opened, so people left on their own, and with the year+ delay more people left the they were going to layoff, now they don't have enough drivers to provide the full schedule.
That is true but I think it goes beyond that. They also overestimated the number of drivers that they could lay off and they under budgeted the switch over to the Confederation Line. The end result is a shortage of both drivers and buses. They dumped surplus buses immediately after the October 6th final switch-over. The whole plan was underconfigured with not enough contingencies built in. I think the budget was a driving force. The operating costs and capital cost repayment for the Confederation Line are more than the operating costs of the buses that they replaced.
 

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