How do you spell frustration? Transit riders offer entries for the Ottawa Light Rail Thesaurus
“I have friends around the world who say, ‘Oh, yeah. We hear about you guys and your wonderful transit system that doesn't work.’”
Bruce Deachman, Ottawa Citizen
Published Aug 02, 2023 • Last updated 8 hours ago • 4 minute read
“We know this will be frustrating to our customers,” City of Ottawa transit services GM Renée Amilcar said as the LRT shutdown entered its third week on Monday.
Ottawa Transit Commission chair and Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower likewise described the situation as “frustrating.”
In a recent interview with the Kitchissippi Times, former mayor Jim Watson described the city’s public transit woes as “a frustrating experience for everyone,” while current mayor Mark Sutcliffe went one step further, sort of, saying he found it “incredibly frustrating.”
I’m sensing a pattern here.
Transit riders, meanwhile, agree that things are frustrating. But most of them, or at least those with whom I spoke on Tuesday, wouldn’t stop there. In fact, you don’t have to talk with very many before you find yourself compiling a decent-sized thesaurus entry to describe the public’s irritation.
Eunnaro Cho, whose daily commute to Tunney’s Pasture from Centretown usually takes 30 minutes, said she couldn’t give an accurate estimate of how long it took these days because the service was so unreliable. “Today was pretty good because they started running the R1 Express, but other days it’s been an hour. And sometimes I just end up waiting for the bus that never comes.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” she added. “We’re beyond the point of disappointment. It’s ridiculous, and we feel helpless.”
Conrad Uniacke added his own transit trifecta: “It’s embarrassing, appalling and a shit-show,” he said. And Uniacke doesn’t even use the LRT portion of Ottawa’s public transit system.
“It’s internationally embarrassing,” he added. “I have friends around the world who say, ‘Oh, yeah. We hear about you guys and your wonderful transit system that doesn’t work.’”
Uniacke lives in Kanata South and works at Tunney’s Pasture, so, when he does take public transit, an option he says he’s increasingly disinclined to choose, especially over the past two weeks, it’s all by bus. But, with R1 replacement bus service adversely affecting other regular bus routes, he won’t take the chance.
“I would take a bus,” he noted, “because it goes right by my door and drops me off here at Tunney’s. So I would take it normally, if I could trust it. It’s all a matter of trust.”
Uniacke listed other cities where he’s ridden LRT without incident, including London, Toronto, Seoul, Washington, New York, Edmonton and Vancouver, before another word for the Ottawa Light Rail Thesaurus popped into his head. “Catastrophic,” he said. “The failures of implementing a system in the nation’s capital have been catastrophic.”
Marc Plamondon, meanwhile, hopped outside the Tunney’s Pasture station for a quick smoke before returning to catch a bus to work. Who could blame him? He lives in Orléans and works as a chef at the Canadian Tire Centre. It’s normally about a 75-minute one-way trip, but during the LRT shutdown has taken as long as three hours each way.
“So some days I’ve spent six hours on the bus,” he said. “I’ve been reading a lot of books, but I have no other choice. An Uber would be $40, one way, so I’m not doing that.
“It’s frustrating, and expensive as well,” he added. “I’m paying $125 a month to spend six hours a day on the bus? It’s bullshit. It’s chaos.”
One woman I spoke with, meanwhile, who asked that her name not be published, said she figured it may simply be time for her to learn to drive a car.
A Hintonburg resident, she works at three music schools: one downtown, one in the west end and one in the east. What should be a 45-minute commute home from the east end has taken two and a half hours during the LRT shutdown.
“I would use darker words than frustrating,” she said. “My husband lost his job because of this because he couldn’t get to work on time.”
She explained that, because the R1 replacement service was pulling drivers from regular routes and canceling some of those trips, the bus that her husband, who works in metal fabrication, usually takes at 6 a.m. wasn’t available.
“It’s f—ing annoying. It’s disorganized, unbelievable. The city and OC Transpo, they don’t care. Nobody gives a damn about the public. This is what it feels like.
“I’m sort of stuck with what OC Transpo is feeding us right now,” she added. “I guess I’ve got to learn how to drive. That’s kind of my only option.”
Stories like these are remarkable not just for how much people are affected by the LRT failure, but also because they seem all too common. When I interviewed riders earlier in this shutdown, I met a woman who failed to get a work contract after she arrived late for a meeting with a potential client. This time I met a woman whose husband lost his job.
Frustrating doesn’t begin to aptly describe it.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...ries-for-the-ottawa-light-rail-thesaurus
Prev
Linear Mode
