Transit Truth Jumps Track - Ottawa Citizen, Sat. Feb 18

Transit truth jumps the track

Randall Denley
The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Isn't it time for the truth about transit? City councillors missed another opportunity this week when they sent the provincial government a transit ridership growth plan that omits the two most relevant points. The city transit expansion plan isn't remotely affordable and it won't come anywhere near meeting the target of 30 per cent of commuter trips on transit.

The report to the province is the 49-page Reader's Digest version of stacks of documents that underlie the big transit plan. About the only one left out is the ridership study, which makes the unpleasant point about how little all this expansion will achieve.

Despite that omission, the latest report does contain some interesting facts.

Although the north-south light rail line is called the biggest construction project in Ottawa's history, it's just a relatively small part of the overall scheme. The transitway now has 30 kilometres of exclusive bus lanes. The expansion plan adds 42 kilometres more. The north-south rail line is but 28 kilometres of a planned 110-kilometre system. Fourteen new park and ride lots will also be required.
Total capital cost of the rail and transitway expansion and all the new buses and trains required comes to $4.4 billion by 2021. The light rail plan, set at $725 million is less than 20 per cent of the total scheme.

The north-south line is really just the beginning. It's supposed to open in 2009. Over the next eight years, the bus fleet will increase 40 per cent while the rail will go up 225 per cent to reflect extension of the north-south line and creation of an east-west system.

Despite more fares coming in, the operating bill for taxpayers is projected to increase by $2.1 billion over the same time period, an average of $121 million a year. Even with more provincial gas tax money in the future, the city report says it's "uncertain" if property taxes could pay for the rest. Actually, it's certain they couldn't. That kind of annual increase, if paid from property taxes, would amount to something like 15 per cent a year, just to pay for transit.

By 2021, Ottawa city staff say our whole transportation network will be four times as large as it is today.

Per capita transit ridership in Ottawa is the third highest in Canada, but it has only increased 4.4 per cent in a decade. The city's current plan calls for increases of six per cent a year. The city's latest report describes the 30 per cent target number as "a
real challenge" that would mean Ottawa had the highest percentage of transit use in North America. It also says the goal can be achieved.

No, it can't, according to the city's own ridership study. Even with the planned construction and spending, transit's share of the daily commute will only increase to 21 per cent by 2021. Without all the expenditure, it will decline below today's levels. The 30 per cent target is only achievable if the 2021 cost of operating a car increases by 50 per cent, after inflation. Sound likely?

The $725 million north-south train will only reach one area that is not already well-served by transit. Riverside South, assuming it increases in size tenfold, will generate 1,400 riders in the morning rush by 2021. That would be less than half of one per cent of all morning rush hour trips. This model community, which has train transit as its central reason for being, will have 21 per cent of its commuting trips provided by transit, well below the city's overall target figure.

If Riverside South doesn't develop as planned, the train will be even more useless because most of the rest of the people it will carry are already well-served by bus transit.

The ignored ridership study also reminds us that projecting big transit increases based on population and job growth is a bit simplistic. The increasing number of jobs in the suburbs won't be easy for transit to serve and the aging population calls into question Ottawa's ability to actually fill all those projected jobs.

A proper executive summary of this latest report would have told us Ottawa's grand transit expansion plan costs way, way more to build than we can afford, has insupportable operating costs and won't meet the commuting-share goals city staff keep citing.

The truth probably does not constitute a compelling sales pitch to the provincial government, which will be asked to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the transit dream. But what about the taxpayers? Don't we deserve the truth?

There's a fine line between a sell job and a con job, and the city has crossed it.