TOY TRAINS, REAL BUSES
ACitizen letter-writer (opposite page) summed up reality: Ottawa bought — and built — a toy train system. It’s cute but it’s fragile and it shouldn’t be used for anything heavy-duty, such as transporting thousands of people around the city during rush-hour in a Canadian winter.
So isn’t it time to start treating LRT like the secondary, supplementary service it is fast becoming, and return to a proper bus service, including express buses from the ’burbs?
Consider the past week alone. On Wednesday, the supports for an electrical cable broke loose near St-Laurent station. Commuters had to walk along the track to the platform. Another train stopped running and people had to cross the track to board a replacement. There were myriad other problems that day; in total, four trains were pulled out of service.
On Thursday — the day of the anticipated monster storm that became just a normal wintry snowfall — the number of trains in service dropped to six. Several now-familiar problems resurfaced, and in one case, after a train lost power, customers had to debark inside the downtown tunnel. It was a particularly embarrassing day for OC Transpo because its managers had, or so they thought, carefully planned for that storm. Mayor Jim Watson had even recommended people work from home, which would mean less stress on the roads and on public transit.
It’s not what councillors thought would happen. Only recently, Transpo called in experts from British rail consulting firm JBA Corp. to help fix the problems the Rideau Maintenance Group (RTM) seemed unable to handle. So far, any positive impact is unknown.
The mess has prompted even LRT defenders such as transit commission chair Allan Hubley to wonder aloud about dumping RTM as the rail system’s service provider. “I think it’s time that we have that conversation with our legal people to say, what are the off-ramps of this contract?” he told the Citizen.
It’s unclear that alternative, competent maintenance firms exist, let alone what the city can do about its contract with RTM. While it sorts this out, we need a fresh look at making the “replacement” bus service semi-permanent, and reactivating the main express routes. Customers could then use LRT at non-rushhour, non-urgent times — or seasons, like, say, summer. The city could focus on fixing its rail snafus on a non-crisis timetable, and slowly rekindle commuter enthusiasm.
How much would this cost? A lot, so it would be good to start crunching numbers. Because sooner or later, the city will need to do something like this, as people desert its toy trains.