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Originally Posted by YOWetal
Agreed. And most of these decisions are in the past. The only possible change in the medium to longterm could be a change in rolling stock. That's obvioulsy not on the table in a univrse where we are cutting.
We have a very expensive rail backbone. We will likely need to cut costs elswhere. Doing that in ways that don't lose riders makes sense and perhaps we need to think outside of current methods. Infrequent busses going to every corner of the city to the nearest train stop for those who have no other choice and perhaps limited mobility but for most passengers it might mean something more frequent, but direct with less stops, and perhaps expensive.
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Considering that we had run trains at full speed for a couple of years, surely we can find a solution that is much less costly than replacing the entire fleet. If fixes are not possible or not affordable, the city needs to come clean with the voters and take their lumps. At some point, the public needs to have a say. This is the most important transit line in the city and it needs to run efficiently
As far as buses, Ottawa's high ridership in the past arose because of efficient and widespread commuter service. A network with much less reach will guarantee much lower ridership in the longterm. We are already abandoning a large portion of the past transit market. Because rail was designed for commuters instead of urban Ottawa, expect trains to run mostly empty in the suburbs if we don't reasonably address the last mile problem. This is exactly why most American rail systems perform so poorly
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