This has been an incredible year for news. There are many contenders for Ottawa newsmaker of the year: Michael Andlauer’s Senators ownership and a new arena at LeBreton Flats; Tobi Nussbaum, NCC leadership and an incredible swimming season at the Ottawa River House.
I’d like to propose that the newsmaker of the year that had the biggest lasting impact on Ottawa is transit.
Ottawa was, not long ago, celebrated for its world class transit system. As recently as 2006, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) made Ottawa the highest transit use per capita in the country. Then, cancelled transit projects in 2006 cost the city tens of millions of dollars, and decades of austerity budgets later, we ended up with the Phase 1 Light Rail Transit (LRT) opening years behind schedule.
LRT construction resulted in years of painful delays that snarled daily life for commuters and a service that was rushed into operation. Parts of Phase 2 were awarded to bidders who failed the technical score, but were cheap, and, like Phase 1, it is years behind schedule. Phase 3, LRT service to further outlying low density suburbs of Kanata and Stittsville is stalled with no horizon for next steps.
Through it all, OC Transpo has continued to weather the challenges. The drivers and front-line staff remain committed to public service but bear the brunt of public frustration with cancelled buses and delays. It is no wonder the agency has staffing problems.
Repeated challenges of non-round wheels, overly sensitive doors that caused system resets; an endless stench at Parliament Station; shut downs due to weather; derailments that have taken the train offline for weeks at a time; weeks-long maintenance shut-downs in the height of summer tourist season, let alone thousands of cancelled bus trips… the list goes on and remain a regular worry for those who depend on transit.
Layered onto this is a precipitous drop in ridership that has yet to rebound. While other cities saw ridership return to pre-pandemic levels, or better, Ottawa’s has not recovered because we haven’t put in the effort or resources needed.
The 2025 City budget continues the challenge: there is a $120-million hole in the transit budget; solutions include raising fares and raising the transit levy. Part of the cost of transit is the expected on-boarding of Phase 2 which will see higher operating costs as the system shifts from construction to operation. Thirty-six million dollars of the deficit is expected to come from federal and provincial coffers but there’s no indication that this is forthcoming. Raising fares is expected to add $15-million to the budget through a series of “nickel and dime” moves.
Behind this death spiral successive councils have created is a design problem. And we need a design problem to solve it and make public transit in Ottawa work.
As Brigitte Pellerin has written, the federal government’s “back to the office” mandate, coupled with LRT and transit unreliability has resulted in a parking problem downtown. Parking lots and garages are packed with commuters who can’t be bothered to spend hours on expensive transit that might or might not get them to work on time.
We could design policies such as a parking levy that could raise parking costs, redirecting millions of dollars towards transit to make it reliable and affordable. Eliminating free on–street parking and raising street parking rates could incentivize more people to drive less.
This is the fundamental concept of induced demand: if we make roads bigger and wider and easier to use, more people will use them. The opposite is also true: make driving more challenging and expensive, and give people a better, more affordable and reliable option and they’re more likely to use it and not drive for every errand.
Solving the transit problem needs to start with designing better funding: build it and they will come. That means a big cash investment now, up front to show good faith that the city is serious about fixing transit.
Every year, we budget hundreds of millions of dollars for road widening and expansion projects. The next eight years see us spending nearly $900-million on suburban and rural roads. What if we designed for the future we need, for the climate crisis we declare? Maybe, because of better transit, we won’t need all those road projects and can save money AND make a better, more affordable, city.
As Neil Saravanamutto wrote, while transit users are being asked to cough up $15-million through higher fares, the city budget allocates up to $22-million for Lansdowne. Is a public subsidy to sports teams and development a need or a want? What if we designed a better solution to Lansdowne with a focus on housing and public places not dependent on ticket sales.
What if we looked at the hundreds of publicly owned lands near transit identified in the Housing Assessment Resource Tool and started building homes through innovative, creative, housing projects, like Edmonton has done. This would stimulate construction, boost the economy and build the density transit needs to be effective?
Maybe its time to make better decisions, embrace design solutions, and start creating the city we aspire to be with a vision, a goal and a plan. Maybe it’s time to make better places for the people who pay the bills.
The death spiral of public transit shouldn’t be a newsmaker.
