The Ottawa public transit blues
A letter to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper
My wife and I are newcomers to Ottawa, both of us are seniors with disabilities, and we are appalled by the abysmal bus service offered in our newly adopted city. We rely on public transit to move about as neither of us is able to drive.
We have been residing in Ottawa for two months now and on numerous occasions have found ourselves stranded, sometimes in vicious weather, waiting for buses touted as providing frequent service, such as the 11 bus on Wellington Street.
We’ve been stuck waiting for 45 minutes or more for a bus that is scheduled to run every 10 to 15 minutes. After these excruciatingly long periods of hanging fire, a phalanx of two or three buses will sometimes appear, plowing valiantly forward to pick up the few patient stragglers who have not yet left the scene of the crime.
Most stops feature elaborate schedules that bear absolutely no resemblance to reality.
The most common bus by far here in the Nation’s capital is labelled “We’re hiring,” an initiative that suggests a dearth of drivers for the no-show buses.
What a blight on a major urban centre that purports to be green!
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/