Ottawa Loves Its Buses

The Ottawa Citizen

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Re: Nothing rapid about train plan, April 29.

Columnist Randall Denley is right on track pointing out the folly of the City of Ottawa's approach to light rail, using trains where buses would work best while maintaining a bus transitway for the heavy commuter traffic that is best suited to trains.

The only thing missing from his analysis was the root cause for this impending white elephant -- namely the continuing infatuation that OC Transpo planners have with the existing Transitway and the notion of buses as rapid-transit vehicles.

For genuine rapid transit you need trains, not buses. The city made a penny-wise, pound-foolish mistake when it decided to use buses for the Transitway instead of going straight to light rail for rapid transit. Despite all the hype about the Transitway, buses will never be as efficient or effective as trains for moving large numbers of commuters quickly and in comfort. The best transit systems in the world rely on trains and buses working together in a hub and spoke system, with buses connecting to the rapid transit rail system, providing local service and serving the relatively low ridership routes between suburbs.

Ottawa has a chance to finally get transit right by introducing light rail to eventually substitute for the present bus Transitway as the heart of Ottawa's rapid transit system. Yet our transit planners are designing routes for the new trains that would relegate them to being little more than streetcars doing suburban milk-run service.

This makes no sense whatsoever, except as a strategy to ensure that light rail will never seriously threaten Ottawa's dependency on buses. By refusing to see beyond their beloved Transitway in its present form, the planners are ensuring that Ottawa's experiment with light rail will be a failure and that Ottawa commuters will be stuck with buses as their only viable alternative to automobiles for decades into the future.

What a waste of taxpayers' dollars, and what a shame to miss such a golden opportunity to finally get transit right in Ottawa.

Phil Brown,
Ottawa