Speech to the Ottawa Transit Commission at City Hall November 25,2024
Here are a few excerpts from my speech to the Ottawa Transit Commission at City Hall yesterday. Anne and I were protesting the proposed 120% hike for a monthly seniors’ bus pass slated for 2025.
The entire five-minute speech is on YouTube at 3:09:25 here:
(5) Transit Commission – November 25, 2024 – YouTube
Is it really the goal of this commission to encourage transit ridership and get cars off the road? How can you expect to achieve this lofty objective when the proposed measures are sure to ground some of our most vulnerable citizens while inducing the more fortunate to abandon mass transit for their private cars. Anyone who works with disabled or impoverished seniors will tell you that these are the folks who will pay a heavy toll for the commission’s retrograde choice.
And it’s clear that if the proposed measures are implemented, users are going to abandon the system in droves. Empty vehicles will not pay for our transit deficit.
Many seniors have suggested the rising cost of monthly bus fares could result in changing their lifestyles. Instead of purchasing monthly transit passes, they could reduce their trips for shopping, volunteering and other social activities while opting to pay for individual trips instead.
Since my wife and I rely on OCTOPUS Transpo to navigate our fair city, we trust that the system will be improved by 120% come the new year. We’ve lived in a number of municipalities on two continents and never have we experienced a public transit system as expensive and unreliable as the OC Transit system. The service is simply appalling…
120% salary cuts for the Mayor and the OC Transpo General Manager?
How about a concerted effort to vastly improve services?
Or a rescinding of the proposed increases?
Back to the drawing board perhaps?
Thank you for your patience and attention in hearing me out…
We were interviewed on CBC radio and television, as well as on Radio Canada (in French) and by a budding Carleton University journalist.
All this frenetic activity and getting interviewed is exhausting and sort of embarrassing, but for a good cause. We’re middle class seniors, so the proposed unfair fare hike, which has been cut in half apparently, due in part to seething senior protests, will not be a knockout blow to us financially. But so many elderly people are impoverished and vulnerable and, unable to afford a transit pass, will see their lives circumscribed.
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
