By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen, October 29, 2019
There is no doubt that the city has badly fumbled the launch of its $2.1-billion light-rail system. The question now is: what are councillors going to do about it?
In the first six weeks of the bright new age of public transit that LRT was supposed to bring, performance has been markedly worse than even longtime OC Transpo skeptics would have expected. OK, the mechanical problems with the doors are not the transit agency’s fault, but what about the failure to allow enough time for people to get on and off the train before the doors closed? People weren’t grabbing doors for the fun of it. There must be industry standards for this kind of thing.
(...)A shiny new train service intended to attract people to public transit is doing everything it can to repel them instead. Who can forget the pictures of passengers climbing over fences to escape the clutches of OC Transpo?
Throughout all of this, Transpo’s communications have been too slow, too vague, too defensive. Again, not a surprise from a city agency whose indifference to bus-riding plebes would be the envy of the snootiest head waiter.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/denley-oc-transpos-reaction-to-lrt-issues-too-slow-too-vague-too-defensive