|
|
|
Balderdash. It's a great success and it's busy. Where are the rest of the trains? I have managed complex systems. Sometimes in spite of years of planning, the introduction into service is complex. Good luck to the management of OC Transpo.
The new LRT system in Ottawa continues to be a total nightmare
There is now a Canadian transit system that may actually be more detested and bemoaned than Toronto's TTC. Ottawa-area residents are not happy — t...www.freshdaily.ca
You clearly don't live in Ottawa
The issue is that the trains are not reliable and the buses are in many cases even less reliable than during the period of LRT construction. This has produced extended commute times. We are not talking about whiners about change., These are widespread complaints about bad service. The public is clamouring for action at the political level and City Council is seriously considering options. This would not happen if it was just whiners.
Thankfully I don't have to go downtown regularly. Except in peak hours, it is now a double transfer for me. With unreliable trains and buses, how does one plan such a trip and make each transfer work?The oddest thing is that there's a weird mass amnesia about what the bus system was like pre LRT. People seem to have forgotten how unreliable and broken it was.
My commute is now consistently just under 30 minutes, and even when there's been delays it's been at most by 5 minutes for me. My old bus commute was horribly unreliable, one day it might be 38 minutes, the next day it might be 50. On the way home how long I would wait at a frozen bus stop on Slater St downtown was a roll of the dice. I could be there anywhere from 1 minute to 20, scheduled times were a fiction, and even GPS times didn't help because buses were in one big long slow moving line across the entirety of downtown (often referred to as the megabus)
.
Memories are oddly short. Expectations of a subway or rail system whatever it is are high. As they should be. Ottawa took a jump into big city status and the plans for phase II are ambitious.The oddest thing is that there's a weird mass amnesia about what the bus system was like pre LRT. People seem to have forgotten how unreliable and broken it was.
My commute is now consistently just under 30 minutes, and even when there's been delays it's been at most by 5 minutes for me. My old bus commute was horribly unreliable, one day it might be 38 minutes, the next day it might be 50. On the way home how long I would wait at a frozen bus stop on Slater St downtown was a roll of the dice. I could be there anywhere from 1 minute to 20, scheduled times were a fiction, and even GPS times didn't help because buses were in one big long slow moving line across the entirety of downtown (often referred to as the megabus)
A lot of the problems still relate to the trains as well. There were 6 straight days of train failures, Friday to Wednesday. For some who had time off from Saturday to Monday, this may not seem so bad. We can't have that frequency of train problems when we are funneling such a large portion of transit traffic through that one line. This magnifies the bus problems. The point here is that we have two problems. Surely, train reliability can be improved but when? Of more concern is when OC Transpo blamed train delays on passenger volumes. The number of trains in operation must be able to handle passenger volume every day. We can't be running this close to maximum capacity. And we all know, that they have been unable to run the originally planned number of trains, another sign of train reliability problems.
You're forgetting the first part. Looking at the transit maps of most cities, there are clear alternatives, even if these alternatives are sometimes (Read: always) inconvenient. Ottawa basically had/has the one corridor for trips involving anything from Tunney's to Blair. People have to transfer at some point. Also, I think people are blaming the LRT because it's easy to blame and it's new. It's definitely better than the old bus system. Like stated before, people hate transfers. Is the LRT kind of bad? Yes. But it's not as terrible as people say.
The problem might not be only the trains themselves. It's the entire infrastructure. It's easy to point to the computers and say ATC isn't working but it could be the wiring and installed incorrectly, the power source not supplying enough power or broken rails. Everything could be wrong.
www.google.com
Speaking of which, anyone feel a Thales Sel Trac curse coming?
