In fairness, OC Transpo is in a tough position. It has had to make do with less and less money for the last couple of decades, while costs continued to increase. It has had to endure severe route and timing changes while its primary feature, the Transitway, was removed. The population and city size has continued to increase. A large portion of its historic ridership was told that it no longer needed to use transit. OC Transpo is trying to adjust to include different modes and kinds of transit vehicles (i.e., trains and e-buses). And it has a City Council that makes random decisions that are binding for OC Transpo.
I am, frankly, surprized that OC Transpo can provide as much service as it does.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that will need to stabilize before OC Transpo can get much better:
- With an on-again-off-again ridership base, OC Transpo really can’t make plans as to how much service to offer. Are workers returning to the office? Will those offices be in the same locations as they used to be?
- The LRT needs to be finished so that OC Transpo can use it more effectively. The need to bus large numbers of people to/from the current termini means buses are tied up away from more local service.
- OC Transpo needs to provide City Council with more and better information so that Council is aware of the consequences of its decisions – including information about effective reductions in the operating budget.
- OC Transpo should begin to dismantle the ’house of cards’ that it has built. Because OC Transpo has had to do more with less for so long, it has leaned (too) heavily on interlining and minimizing maintenance to try to maximize bus utilization. While that sounds like a laudable goal, this strategy has gotten OC Transpo into a hole. The supply-line problems for parts and buses, for example, has resulted in the inability to fulfil the scheduled service. If the wind blows the wrong way, those cards begin to fall.
Three years from now, things should be different. Workers will be back at the office. Routine travel patterns will be formed. New e-buses will have arrived. And the O-Trains will run to Moodie, Algonquin, Trim, and Riverside South. All of this should allow OC Transpo to better handle what is needed. That is, assuming that City Council recognizes that transit must be properly funded, and that OC Transpo uses the money to design more reliable operations. This is what the next (as yet unchosen) General Manager of OC Transpo has to look forward to.
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