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  #1  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 4:21 PM
Tesladom Tesladom is offline
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Experience with OC Transpo

I admit that I am not a user of public transit in Ottawa, probably only used the service 5 times in the last 25 years, primarily to go to RedBlacks game using the special bus service. However, I do believe that effective and reliable Public Transit is a necessity in our city, and supportive of the investments we have made (in principle at least). I will profess to drive a personal vehicle as primary transportation 99.9% of the time

Today I was without a vehicle 3 blocks away from Pimisi Station, I was going to Uber back home in Orleans but decided to try the LRT and transfer on bus at Blair that literally drops off 3 doors down from my house (#30). This is straightforward (or so I thought…)

8:22AM – I leave by point of origin on Rochester Street, nice walk to Pimisi, purchased ticket at the machine and walked down just as LRT arrives 8:29AM. Perfect! Great service!

I only rode the LRT once before and this was my first experience riding end-to-end (or close to anyway: Pimisi to Blair). The train is nice and clean, but OMG this thing is so slow!!!! I rode on other systems and they go fast, I was on Canada Line in Vancouver YVR to Downtown and that thing was flying. The LRT needs to slow to a crawl at every corner, and the system is full of corners, loud screeching noises etc… Yikes!! To make matters worse, it seems to stop at each station for too long, waiting with open doors at stations that have nobody there (like Tremblay, Cyrville etc.. ) In winter this must be brutal. There’s no need to stop for so long.

Regardless, I made it to Blair at 8:59AM, so 30 minutes.. meh! That would have been no more than 10-12 minutes by car but acceptable I guess. I was now transferring to the route 30 which should be a high frequency route since it folloows large arterial roads through Orleans (Jeanne d’Arc – Mer Bleue - Brian Coburn). This is where the system breaks down. Apparently, this bus comes every 30 minutes based on OC Transpo app, but it said 9:20AM was next bus so I waited, along with a bunch of other people… bus never came. I pulled out my phone to check Uber since this was ridiculous, but the fare to my house was a staggering $34.00, so I decided to wait it out. Finally at 9:39AM, a full 40 minutes after arriving at Blair it shows up (by the way the app was now saying 9:48).

Rode a double-decker bus for the first time (The things rattles a shakes worse than an old Dodge), and witnessed something so awful I can’t get over: Along Jeanne d’Arc, and older lady with difficulty walking was stumbling to get to bus stop, about 50 meters from it, She was clearly waving at the bus to stop to pick her up, he kept going. I feel so bad for that lady, she probably had to wait another hour or whenever the bus may come by again. I respect that OC Transpo buses should only stop at designated but stops but this just does not feel right, the bus should have stopped to let her in

Made it to my stop at 10:02AM and another 30 seconds walk to my house. All in all, 1hour 40 minutes… Based on Google Maps that trip by car is 26 minutes. I though it would be 50-60 minutes tops

I’m writing this because it is obvious that the system is broken, I keep hearing this from the people who use the system, and many who have basically quit the system and opting for cars… I can’t blame them, and as a taxpayer, this is really insulting as a Basic Service. I lot of people on this board advocate public transit, while I agree it is part of our solution, this system is not; the LRT is too slow, too many stops, and feeder bus network is not reliable and very uncomfortable to ride. The sad part is that many people who rely on this service can’t afford a car, and use it to commute to work or school. We are letting them down.

This system sucks, glad I have a car, I feel sorry for those who don’t and have to endure this BS every day
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  #2  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 4:53 PM
Fading Isle Fading Isle is offline
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The biggest problem with the transit system in this city is frequency and always has been. For those with the option to drive, no one is ever going to take transit over driving if they have to potentially wait 30 minutes for a bus.

I lived in Toronto for 10-years and the biggest difference I noticed, and the reason why so many more people ride transit there, is that transit is often more convenient than driving because of its frequency. I lived in 6 different areas of the city during that time and never once had to check a transit schedule, even in the suburbs. You could just go to a bus stop and within 5-10 minutes a bus would be there.

I've taken the exact route you took today multiple times and the biggest problem is always bus frequency. The time it takes can fluctuate widely depending on the bus. The 30 is a fine experience once you're on the bus (and faster than driving during rush hour because of the bus lane on the 174), but it's often late or doesn't show up and the lack of frequency even when it arrives on time already adds so much to commute times. I think just having buses coming frequently and reliably alone would drastically improve service in Ottawa and increase ridership. Every route should be at least 15-minute frequency, but many more should be better than that.

The train has been operating at reduced speeds since July because it keeps breaking. No word on when it will return to normal speeds. Even the normal speed is quite a bit slower than trains are in Toronto whether it be TTC or Go Transit though.
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  #3  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 5:17 PM
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The train used to be relatively fast. End-to-end in 24 minutes. I didn't ride much at all during the pandemic, but when I got back on in May, it was slower, and seems to have gotten worse over the summer. One reasoning I've heard is heat related, but it's slow a.f. even on cooler days.

On the frequency side, Cyrville can be long as the train waits for the one at Blair to load passengers since they cross just before (west) of the crossover. But agreed that Tremblay, Cyrville, Pimisi and Bayview (as long as Trillium is out of service) should have much shorter dwell times, 10 seconds max (instead of the average 25 seconds, roughly).

First time I hear of suburban buses not showing-up. Maybe it's just the milk-runs that are like clock-work. That's never happened to me when I lived in Orleans. Happens constantly on urban routes, however.

We hear a lot of good stories about bus drivers going above and beyond for customers, but of course, horror stories like that are common as well, unfortunately.
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  #4  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 5:30 PM
Fading Isle Fading Isle is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J.OT13 View Post
First time I hear of suburban buses not showing-up. Maybe it's just the milk-runs that are like clock-work. That's never happened to me when I lived in Orleans. Happens constantly on urban routes, however.
This is just my experience, but I moved to Orleans from Centretown in the spring and have been taking the 30 multiple times per week. It's been really inconsistent. For what it's worth, from my experience the commute home in the evening is more unreliable than my commute to work in the morning. In the morning towards Blair I would say it's about 50% on time and 10-20% of the time it doesn't come at all. In the evening it almost never arrives at Blair when it's supposed to. This is of course compounded by the lack of frequency. If it came every 5-10 minutes, these irregularities wouldn't really be an issue, but because it comes every 15-30 minutes, it's incredibly frustrating.
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  #5  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 5:55 PM
Tesladom Tesladom is offline
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Originally Posted by Fading Isle View Post
In the morning towards Blair I would say it's about 50% on time and 10-20% of the time it doesn't come at all. In the evening it almost never arrives at Blair when it's supposed to. This is of course compounded by the lack of frequency.
How are people who work supposed to rely on this?
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  #6  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 7:14 PM
DTcrawler DTcrawler is offline
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I'm an extremely frequent transit user and despite my best efforts to tell my friends and family that the system as a whole (and especially the O-Train) work much better than the media would let you think, I know deep down that there is lots of work to be done.

Forgive my bluntness, but my gut feeling is that Ottawa still has the small-town mindset that transit is only used by the "poors," who are ok to neglect, since any "wealthy" (i.e. middle class) or self-respecting person would own a car.

That's why our buses/stations are filthy, because who cares about public (i.e. poors') perception of the system? Their opinion doesn't matter anyways.

That's why ads on the exterior of buses advertise jewellery, Sens tickets and, ironically, cars, while the ads on the interior of buses are about things like social services, STD prevention, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, etc.

That's why our system as a whole is focused on doing the bare minimum for riders, as opposed to bigger cities like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, where the focus is on providing quality service and actually trying to grow ridership.

Basically, transit in Ottawa is treated as a token of goodwill for the less fortunate, rather than an essential city service meant to be used by people of all income classes, necessary to reduce congestion and increase sustainability.

I'm fortunate enough to own a luxury car. When I moved to downtown Ottawa, I vowed to keep it parked in my building's underground garage, and to use transit or active transportation for my day to day life as much as possible, to try to emulate my lifestyle when I lived in Toronto and Vancouver. I'll admit, though, some days it's really tempting to just pick up my keys, and as of late, I often do so.
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  #7  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 7:29 PM
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Hopefully, that changes with a new Council in the coming years. We need to stop focusing on the suburb to downtown commuter and start building a system that gets people where they want to go all day, everyday reliably and at a reasonable cost. Certainly doesn't help that driving is cost competitive when you're alone and the hands down winner as soon as you're with one more person.
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  #8  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 7:31 PM
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phil235 phil235 is offline
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In my view, there is one change that would make the most difference to the average transit user. The difference between Ottawa and some of the other cities mentioned is the fact that it has a massive land area and low population density over most of it (particularly the greenbelt). Instead of sticking to the goal of getting an infrequent bus within a few hundred metres of every home in the city, the objective change to providing frequent (and hence useful) service on every major transit corridor. The more density around the corridor (actual density, not some vague future density) the more service it should get. Not only would this make the service far more useful, but it would improve the financials for OC Transpo.

I'd also like to see a premium fare for service crossing the greenbelt, to at least partially reflect the cost of providing the service.
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  #9  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 8:29 PM
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ponyboycurtis ponyboycurtis is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DTcrawler View Post

That's why ads on the exterior of buses advertise jewellery, Sens tickets and, ironically, cars, while the ads on the interior of buses are about things like social services, STD prevention, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, etc.
Jeez... I never really clued in on that but now that I think about it you are correct. Very astute observation and I agree with the rest of your post.

OC Transpo is a pretty poorly run organization by the looks of it.

-Lack of preparation for the rule changes regarding the bus drivers breaks. They then have the audacity to turn around and kind of shrug and imply it wasn't their fault they are short on drivers.

-For a service that is clearly short on revenue I'm surprised how little ads there actually are on the buses to start with these days. There is also no advertising on the trains or within stations. I know they said in the first year they wanted to avoid advertising to focus on wayfinding which I thought was a good idea. I would usually be the last guy advocate for more ads but there seems to be some missed opportunity here to generate additional revenue.

-The selection of 40' and artics can also be strange at times. Not often, but occasionally for myself a busy rush hour bus route will show up with a 40' when it would normally be an artic. You will often see this route run an artic until last bus. I'm sure there are semi valid reasons for this like breakdowns and such but still aggravating.

-Bus routing and timing can be peculiar in regards to transfers.



The 90 and 92 both start and finish at the same place. The 90 has 15 minute service and the 92 has 30 minute. Without fail all 4 buses will pass by each other within a MAXIMUM of 5 minutes. This stretch of road is the nexus
of the densest part of both bus routes aside from the midrises that the 90 passes by at Springland.

A 92 that gets me to South Keys in 5 minutes is just as useful as waiting for the other bus that will take me all the way to Hurdman as I can easily transfer to a Transitway bus. This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the winter. A large heated shelter at South Keys certainly beats waiting in the sidewalk shelter.

I'm biased because these are the two busses I use but the timing of these route always seemed weird.
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  #10  
Old Posted Sep 14, 2022, 8:29 PM
Fading Isle Fading Isle is offline
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Look at density maps like this one based on the 2021 census https://censusmapper.ca/#13/45.3972/-75.7257 really show how strangely distributed density is in Ottawa too. There are some quite central areas like the Glebe, Old Ottawa East, and Westboro where the current density is roughly the same as Orleans and Barrhaven, which complicates things. Most of central Ottawa outside of Centretown, Lowertown, and parts of Vanier actually have similar densities to the suburbs. And then you have areas quite far out like Bayshore and Jasmine with higher densities than anywhere else in the city. At the other extreme you have other quite central areas like Rockliffe, Manor Park, and Rothwell Heights with densities equivalent to rural Ottawa.
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  #11  
Old Posted Sep 15, 2022, 4:32 PM
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ponyboycurtis ponyboycurtis is offline
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I forgot the most vexxing part. Outside of peak, the 90 is 30 minute service... and yet... at BOTH Hurdman and Greenboro both busses depart within a minute or two of each other.
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