By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, November 6, 2019
You don’t have to be a mind-reader to know what went through the heads of OC Transpo monthly pass holders when Mayor Jim Watson professed himself “furious” after yet another LRT malfunction. We were all pretty upset.
If you’re counting on a bus that fails to show up, or if the train you’re waiting for isn’t running, it doesn’t take long for you to be in a jam. If you can’t afford to be late, certainly not twice a week, bus and train delays send your anxiety through the roof. And if you’re already in a financially vulnerable situation, the options of calling Uber (which will have a surcharge, by the way, based on sudden increased demand) or driving your own car aren’t available to you.
Drivers aren’t in a much better place, crawling slowly through traffic molasses whose stickiness is hard to predict. And that, as Kelly Egan aptly put it in his column earlier this week, is the biggest problem. Not knowing from one day to the next whether your commute will be 35 or 75 minutes is beyond maddening.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/pellerin-four-ideas-to-help-boost-ottawas-bus-and-lrt-service