The city is in an awful mess, writes Randall Denley, the result of years of underspending to maintain the things we own, like roads and sewers. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /POSTMEDIA
Please bring back old website, OC Transpo
OC Transpo what have you done with your website? I am 75 years old and not computer savvy. When I went to your website this week, the travel planner and route schedules have changed. Previously I was able to see when my bus was to arrive at my stop. I did not see that option available to me so I would have to rely on the start time of the route to get to my stop. Have I missed information about website changes?
Is this telling us there may or not be a bus available? Please bring back the previous website. This one is a no go.
Joan Alexander, Ottawa
Hear hear, let’s build more roads
Re: Stop spending more on OC Transpo when roads need fixing, by Randall Denley
What a great article!
Since the majority of Ottawa’s population depend on the roads, you are absolutely right, the roads should take a priority over the bus or transit system.
I’m retired now. However, all of my jobs required me to take my vehicle to work as well as my husband’s jobs.
When driving through the U.S., even towns a third or quarter of our size have much wider highways and oftentimes ring roads that bypass downtown. Our cities roads are a joke in comparison.
I’m 100% behind your proposal to fix the roads and give us more roads instead of putting so much money into a system which is only used by a small percentage of the population
Lucie Masson, Orleans
Randall Denley’s argument is a chicken and egg story
Randall Denley suggests we should forget OC Transpo and just fix roads. This is a bit of a chicken and egg story.
More people drive to work because public transit is unreliable and slow. It now takes twice as long to take transit. This has led to more congestion and wear on the roads. Also keeping taxes below 3% means we’ve been kicking the can or car down the road for years.
You get what you pay for and as the economic saying goes, ‘There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’.
Read More: Ottawa's infrastructure spending gap is a double XL problem | Opinion; I saw our new RTO floor plan today. I've never felt like this | Letters to the Editor
Nancy Biggs, Orleans
Fresh and broad insight from Denley
Thank you, Randall Denley, for providing numbers to give citizens a fresh and broad insight into travel in the City of Ottawa. Discussion about OC Transpo has been dominated by the disaster of the O Train, a disaster not of the current Council’s making, and which may be beyond redemption.
Let’s cheer one good thing in recent time, the addition of electric buses to OC Transpo’s fleet. They cost more to purchase, but the cost of the electricity to run them is lower than the cost of diesel fuel. The delivery may be late, but they are arriving. They do not emit carbon dioxide to aggravate global heating. Of great importance to the people of Ottawa, electric buses do not emit into the air we breathe a cocktail of other pollutants — oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter (soot), carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons — all of which are bad for our health.
John Hollins, Gloucester
LRT failures are driving Ottawa’s growing congestion crisis
Ottawa’s traffic congestion has reached a breaking point, and it is no coincidence that this crisis has grown alongside the ongoing failures of our light‑rail system. The city is facing a perfect storm: unreliable LRT service pushing riders back into their cars, and major Stage 2 construction reducing road capacity at the very moment we need it most.
