Quote:
Originally Posted by waterloowarrior
Sounds like a good idea... there seems to be too much micromanaging of transit by city council
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We've been here before, a little over a decade ago. Before adjusting the deck chairs again, we should look back as to why the transit commission was dissolved in the first place. There must be lots of old reports kicking around somewhere from that era.
Personally, I think the "micromanaging" thing is a red herring. Very seldom does Council vote against proposed OC Transpo operational changes; the ward councillors often do but seldom the whole lot of them.
The exception to the above is with respect to fare increases to cover increasing operating costs, which is something Council does meddle with. But that's the exception that proves the point since it gets us back to my first paragraph - bringing OC Transpo under municipal council control was premised partly on controlling runaway costs at OC Transpo.
When the commission was dissolved before, it came on the heels of the completion of the Transitway, something that was supposed to reduce costs and increase ridership, but it failed utterly on the latter and at best restrained cost growth. Ottawa has a fundamentally inefficient transit system because of its reliance on BRT. Switching governance back and forth between commission and department isn't going to change that. Until the light rail line is in place, and preferably to Baseline, proposed changes to governance should be iced.
OC Transpo's other major issue is employee relations, which, O'Brien aside, is not something that Council has interfered with, and even O'Brien's interference has been more vocal than anything else. If the same bureaucrats are left in charge of a commission, I can't see that employee relations are going to improve much, especially if it is done while we still operate our inefficient BRT system with its pressure on hours of work and length of day.
Additionally, any of these discussions on a transit commission should cease ignoring the other side of the river. The National Capital Region should have one interprovincial transit commission with representation from both cities and the federal government (whose employees and workplaces it serves in large measure).