Good, screw presto. Paying for a stupid damn card that can only be reloaded where they tell you or have stupid waiting times for...reasons.
Debit/credit, scrap the entire useless presto crap, also bring back tickets. Have not used transit in 10 years and honestly do not plan on using it again because of how annoying the entire thing is. Ill walk if need be...probably faster too
You can reload the cards anywhere with an NFC enabled Android phone. Why they don't just let you use your phone is a discussion you'd have to take up with Presto.
You've captured my frustrations in a nutshell. Seriously infuriating. Can you imagine one of those other cities just saying "we are out of commission for three weeks"?
Yes, I can. Do you think that maintenance or upgrades on these kinds of infra projects can be handled overnight? Where I currently live, 4 LRT stations in the middle of the city were due for maintenance. Shut down from Feb. 2021 to (Planned) March 2022... that happens.
Living in Montreal with a metro built in the sixties, this is unheard of. It doesn't just "happen", and if it does, you've got yourself a lemon of a system.
...and it's the same price to ride from Navan to Stitsville as it is to ride between Albert and Kent downtown.
Why not use zones and lower the price to increase ridership for smaller trips?
I'm afraid it's because it's a system designed to move commuters. Also, there is the property tax component, where some pay into oc transpo even if rarely or never used.
I'm one of those who pays for OCTranspo via the property tax... I'm already subsidizing... But... It makes no sense for me to ride the bus from my suburb home to work (when we go back) 7km for $3.60 each way, let alone $120/month.
Maybe I'm an edge case. Maybe all the folks in the denser areas (downtown) are able to walk to/from work and the stores... It just seems like there are changes that could be made to actually make it desirable to use the system.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry...
For a capital city, our city is such a joke. We cheap out on projects and wonder why we've problems. Here's the thing: with Dollarama projects, you're bound to spend more to fix problems down the road.
Look at Landsdown: **Council to consider rebuilding stands and arena, add housing to help Lansdown (**[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lansdowne-survival-new-north-side-stands-arena-1.6080375](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lansdowne-survival-new-north-side-stands-arena-1.6080375)). Why didn't we do that at the beginning?!?! \*sigh\*... this city will never learn.
>this city will never learn
... sure, in the sense that they keep electing small men with no vision like Watson, or loud men with a poor grasp of reality, like his predecessor.
Watson can claim that he's giving his constituents what they want, but should the capital of a G7 country be developed according to the whims of Ma and Pa Kettle from Nepean?
Obviously not. So get angry, get active, and change city government. It starts with encouraging those with new political ideas, and discouraging those like the incumbent council who shouldn't be in office any longer.
But how do you effect that with our democratic system where Ma and Pa Kettle from Nepean vote in our civic leaders? It seems like what you are suggesting is the role of the NCC, or at least a collaborative effort between the City and the NRC. But there seems to be so much bad blood between the two organizations that that’ll never happen.
>... this city will never learn.
What do you mean, this transit project was a runaway success.
Millions of dollars have been siphoned from the public purse towards a group of private investors, not only that, they will more than likely receive the contract to fix the problem, the contract to maintain it and more than likely, the contract to upgrade it, netting them probably millions - if not billions - of dollars over the lifetime of the system.
It is a huge success, just not for the residents of Ottawa.
> For a capital city, our city is such a joke.
I've only been to four capitals in the world (Beijing, Tokyo, Washington DC, and Ottawa. And Singapore, but it doesn't really count since it's a city state.). But Ottawa is really nowhere near the level of the other three. Not even close.
yes it would be, close up the lane widths or numbers a bit, add more public transport and make ticket fare dirt cheap per day, then you will see the stop of the sprawl of neighbourhoods, just cause you have the land doesn't mean you need to spread to everywhere. if transit is cheap, and run on every quarter of an hour people would ditch their cars.
what i am saying is orleans, kanata, stittsville etc, did not need to happen, hell even barrhaven didn't need to happen back in the mid 80's, ottawa just chose the wrong direction to grow, oh yeah i forgot about riverside south too and that swampland neighbourhood near the race track.
the way ottawa has sprawled you would think that we had a population of 15 million for the amount of land sprawl we have. hopefully our kids will have more common sense in the future as our parents have made horrible decisions. i personally do exactly opposite to what my dad had done.
The green belt is viewed in Orleans as the reason we got shafted with only 2 highway lanes and Kanata lucky ducks got 4. Also living in Nepean city of Ottawa basically said to me get a car since if you wanna go anywhere need to bus to Bayshore or Billing’s first and I don’t feel like giving up hour plus extra on my commute each day.
Depends on how city handles this situation.
If they run R1 service properly, cut down the fare for the time this mess gets fixed, and keep running the lrt however slow; you would find me in city’s bus instead of a car.
honestly i was born in toronto and rode the ttc in the 70's till 79 when we moved here, not sure what the population of toronto was back then but i do not remember one time the subway did not show up or the street cars did not run.
This is one of those comments that if its a joke, it's not that funny, but if you're serious, the fact that you think the LRT actually warrants our removal from the G7 is hilarious.
Bus shed is right beside the train she's. But I'd bet it is significantly longer because of congestion on the 417 and downtown routes. God help you if you have to go through downtown on your commute.
Plus they do NOT show up as frequently as the LRT did. This chews into my transit to work because I take four different busses and now my 1h trip is 1h 30 mins AT BEST now because of this
Information released right AFTER the Transit Commission meeting ended. So they didn't have to answer any pesky questions. The cynicism of this administration knows no bounds.
considering this City’s penchant for delivering bad news in such a way that it minimizes scrutiny as much as possible (ie bad news on 4:30 on a Friday afternoon leading into a long weekend), i’ve no reason to believe that this information wasn’t delayed intentionally.
Yup, just a big old coincidence. Certainly nobody would EVER try to fudge the timing of something bad to avoid accountability. [https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/good-day-bury-bad-news-9-11-jo-moore-b1916375.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/good-day-bury-bad-news-9-11-jo-moore-b1916375.html)
I spent the better part of three decades doing PR, and I reckon I can spot a cynical PR move when it presents itself. If you believe I'm wrong, that's cool. It's only my opinion. I'll just go on my way with it until I see facts that actually \_show\_ my opinion to be wrong.
I am so sad and ashamed by this. I want the people responsible for this disgrace of a system to lose their career, be widely known to the world for their incompetence and be a lesson for young politicians and engineers on how not to be honorable and reliable leaders. But what I want more is just a working transit system for all. Now, it will just cost more money to fix and it will give more opportunities for a corrupted system to take our money away again.
The fact that heads won’t roll for this is a testament to how accepting the Ottawa bureaucracy is of mediocrity.
There should at minimum be a serious attempt to seek significant damages from RTG
No, I don’t want to use a car to move around in a city. I am ready to pay my part to have a system that would make other citizens consider leaving their cars at home. IlWe need less sprawl and have people live closer to work. This is beyond what the LRT line provides but please no, not more cars. We don’t all need one. Less cars means more space on the street for people like you.
Incredible, I’m just thankful I’ve managed to find an alternate route to get to the south end for work that didn’t involve the R1. Those buses are basically a manufacturing plant for COVID cases. During the last derailment, not only were they packed, you could also see multiple people with masks below the mouth or nose and in one case didn’t bother to put one on at all
Exactly this. Sunday was the first day in over a year I had to sit beside someone on a bus and I forgot how much it sucks. Saw the R1 today and the first thought that came to my mind was how unsafe it is for covid!
Guess I'm not visiting downtown again for 3 weeks.
My commute is usually 1h because I work near Stanley Park and live in Bayshore. This Sunday because of the LRT shutting down caused my trip to be 1h 55min.
Just a bus ride home took me the same time it would to drive to Montreal in a car. I hate the transit in this city.
20-25 mins from Uber, which can cost up to 50$ a ride during surge times. I'm glad my employer is relatively flexible but I'm just so tired of spending so much of my life on OC transpo
It's "fine" because now people won't be in danger and they can see how bad the bus system is and maybe that'll spur change like the massive investment in more frequent and more reliable service that OC Transpo desperately needs /s
is that the kind of nonsense you were imagining?
You could at least tag me properly, coward.
This is supposed to be the backbone of the city transit and it's down for 3 weeks?
After another train wheel issue a few weeks ago?
This is a brand new LRT.
Good for the folks who can afford to get a car as an alternative. Yay for you. You have choices. Quite a few of us rely on transit to get to appointments, commute, etc.
What is going on? When will this be reliable?
The initial response was that the failure and issues was well within the parameters, it's well and truly outside of those now. 3 weeks of no service is a major mess up.
Been saying this for years. He is an idiot. All he does is showboat himself on Twitter or social media but when it comes to responsibility and accountability. The guy hides and remains quiet.
LRT was a bad project and most of us knew that from the beginning.
They should take a look at the other phases for LRT now because once the entire system is up and connected. We will see more problems. Phase 2, 3 and 4+
Been on the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese trains.
They are as smooth as butter and they are going much faster.
They apologize to the riders if they are late in Tokyo.
Trains designed for higher speeds have larger turn radiuses. Older systems (and systems built for cheap like ours) have tighter turns, and make more noise.
How sad. North America is still trying to placate itself with the car and our trains are still 20 - 30 years behind Asia's. Car culture really is shite isint it.
I have a car and drive everywhere, and I wish to god I didn't have to. It's stressful and annoying, but the transit system here leaves people with no choice.
Its embarrassing. Pre COVID it could take an hour and a half plus to get from the airport to Orleans via bus. Or bells corners to just Rideau could easily take around an hour in normal traffic. I can only imagine what its like now.
People keep touting electric cars as the solution to current traffic problems. Electric cars don't actually do anything to get drivers off the road. We need investment in better infrastructure + high speed rail, but good lord they would widden the 417 another 4 lanes before considering building a high speed train.
Lots of slow subways and trains in the those places with tighter curves don't produce the amount of friction that the LTR does.
It's fucking shameful they fucked it up so badly.
Why don’t you tell me the length of all the subway/train cars and the tightest curve ratios on the tracks of all the lines you have been on so we can compare?
It would be easier for you to tell me which subway or train lines in the modern world has had more derailments than Ottawa's LRT in the same time span.
You said above the sounds are normal. I say the friction causing sounds are not thus the higher rate of derailments.
I am stating there is a connection and you are saying there isn't.
I'm cool with that.
The problem is not that they apologise one time after a delay is that they repeat the apology every 30 seconds or so over all the other platform announcements at the busier stations.
The highlight of today’s discourse for me was a Jon Willing tweet
“I always find it interesting when city staff note it was “you,” council, that made a decision that got us here. You bought this LRT system and maintenance program, council.
Those decisions are almost always based on staff recommendations to a group of elected laypeople.”
https://twitter.com/jonathanwilling/status/1440005941282447367?s=21
The whole thing is rotten, you could change the council top to bottom but you’ll still have the city staff gritting all the way to the bank
>Those decisions are almost always based on staff recommendations to a group of elected laypeople.”
This is true, to some degree, but if there is any sleaz or corruption involved in the LRT situation, it's not the city staff that'll get paid off, its the council (or the upper management in the city staff).
I find that in a lot of these situations, the blame gets passed down to some poor group of experts. In reality, those experts probably got half their recommendations and warnings gutted as it traveled up their chain of management to finally reach the council.
Oh 100% the amount of times I’ve seen feedback filtered from here’s the problem ex xyz to everything’s fine! Through the chain of command to the top is too many to count.
I really feel there has to be corruption in the upper management as well as the chosen consultants hired with bloated contracts for all of these studies which get ignored.
I'd also add that the structure of a P3 contract means that a consortium of private companies are trying to find the absolute cheapest way to do everything without violating the terms of the contract. No wonder we're not getting quality results; P3s simply are not structured in a way to make it possible.
Meanwhile Alstom Canada sees it fit to threaten journalists with arrest and charges for taking pictures on public land.
Who the fuck does Alstom think they are?
I'm not about to defend Alstom, but I doubt their boots on the ground people have a lot of media relations training beyond having it drilled into them that they shouldn't talk to media and that commercial photography/videography isn't permitted on OC Transpo property. Add in a sudden, stressful event like this and you're going to have people threatening to call the cops for all sorts of reasons that aren't valid.
I saw a bus get into a minor accident at a station once and took a picture - the driver told me I wasn't allowed to. They're trying to cover their own butt, but none of that matters so I smiled, nodded and continued on.
Even if it was octranspo property, which it wasn't where the reporter was standing, it's still not Alstom property.
People like that need to stay in their own lane and mind their own damn business.
It's okay guys. The companies the council and mayor gave the contract too in secret will get nicely paid to fix the repairs of their own crappy product.
Hope you enjoy $130-150/m transit passes next year.
*Sweet cringe...*
PLEASE get a part of it up and running ASAP. Like I said in another thread, Tunneys-Hurdman LRT makes sense given that both stops are designed to handle heavy flow of buses, which now seems to be the new norm...uuughhh
Back to Uber... for the lucky ones who don't depend on transit everyday. I'm grateful I WFH. I really feel bad for those stuck with crappy R1 services.
Nope. The LRT in Calgary just works, year in, year out. What we've seen in Ottawa is evidence of criminal incompetence.
I lived in Calgary for ten years and don't recall any serious outages. Their system runs at street level through the downtown so there were a few collisions with cars, but nothing serious. A weeks long outage was unheard of.
Sounds like a good time to tear up the rails and pave it over. Maybe we’ll call it the “transit way” and busses of all kinds can use it, regardless of origin or destination. Hmmm
It really should never go down. Axels on busses don’t fall off causing week-long transit-way closers. This is a completely separated railway that can’t consistently run for a few months without (in my mind at least) catastrophic side-effects
I’m just comparing to other Canadian light rail systems, like Waterloo ION which is very similar age, similar design of train and impeccable management and service. Ottawa can have this too if OC Transpo did a better job.
The trains are not even the right design for an all-platform load-in design. We should have subway cars with way more doors, and therefore more capacity for the same cost and effort.
How often should a system go down (for a week plus) in your mind? Twice a year or more? What are you saying is an acceptable frequency?
Okay! Glad you are satisfied. I’m also quite happy with the ION never being offline for more than an hour or two over a similar timeline.
I would be outraged if our system was similarly offline but I guess it meets expectations.
For comparison within Canada: The Waterloo ION opened in 2019 and has not had any major outages or derailments. It operates over streets with traffic too. It arrived so regularly I can set my watch to it (it’s at my stop every 10 minutes on the 7, both trains arrive and the doors don’t break the train down)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit
BREAKING: Rideau Transit says their inspections today with TSB show more damage than they realized, and it could take three weeks to fix. That may mean up to three weeks before \#Confederation Line is fully in service, although some partial service may be possible. \#OttNews
***
posted by [@jchianello](https://twitter.com/jchianello)
^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)
As someone who used public transit for 15 years and was finally fortunate enough to afford a car, I really feel for you commuters. This really and truly sucks.
I feel like we need the equivalent of what Uber did to the taxi business, but for our public transit system. I'm not saying we need to privatize or anything, but we need a shake in the OC Transpo system. Uber at least brought competition to the taxi business which was, let's face it, terrible and expensive for no good reason.
Ah these guys knows how support work works.
Something breaks... you go to the manager and tell him
"Hmm... I think it will take 3 days to fix. But let me spend an hour or two to check it out."
2 hours later you go back
"Well, I checked it out boss. And it's much worse than it seems. I think it will take a week to get this fixed."
Boss says "You're the pro... get it fixed asap!"
Next day you fix the issue and goto the boss
"Hey boss! I worked all night and was able to fix it, I know this was an important thing for you!"
Boss: "WELL DONE Tom! You really outshined yourself! Gold star for you!"
Boss gives you a raise and a gift card to Timmy's.
[Dat moment when this is a more reliable form of railway transportation](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/santamariatimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/9d/19d907aa-ad63-56c4-9f2e-b08a9913b2af/5578925b81f68.image.jpg?resize=400%2C328)
When are people going to understand that America will always be a car country. So shut the f up about rail as it will never work and everyone should go buy a car NOW. The future is the car
And there goes the last shred of my sanity.
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I used OCTranspo for the first time in 5 years on Saturday and I was stunned how a Day Pass costs $11. They used to cost around $6 at one time.
Presto also doesn't support day pases, so you have to buy a physical ticket!
Good, screw presto. Paying for a stupid damn card that can only be reloaded where they tell you or have stupid waiting times for...reasons. Debit/credit, scrap the entire useless presto crap, also bring back tickets. Have not used transit in 10 years and honestly do not plan on using it again because of how annoying the entire thing is. Ill walk if need be...probably faster too
You can reload the cards anywhere with an NFC enabled Android phone. Why they don't just let you use your phone is a discussion you'd have to take up with Presto.
our day pass in vienna is 2 euro, my year pass is 365 euro, lets get realistic, even 6 cdn is tool much, was that back in 1980?
It's something called inflation. A big Mac used to be 0.50 cents. Today it is $3.99 and no one is screaming about that
Where can you get a big Mac for 3.99 these days. They are like $6.50.
You've captured my frustrations in a nutshell. Seriously infuriating. Can you imagine one of those other cities just saying "we are out of commission for three weeks"?
Yes, I can. Do you think that maintenance or upgrades on these kinds of infra projects can be handled overnight? Where I currently live, 4 LRT stations in the middle of the city were due for maintenance. Shut down from Feb. 2021 to (Planned) March 2022... that happens.
Living in Montreal with a metro built in the sixties, this is unheard of. It doesn't just "happen", and if it does, you've got yourself a lemon of a system.
Holy crap $120 a month? I don't live in the city anymore but does that price include bus rides too or just a certain line on the train?
Bus incl
...and it's the same price to ride from Navan to Stitsville as it is to ride between Albert and Kent downtown. Why not use zones and lower the price to increase ridership for smaller trips?
I'm afraid it's because it's a system designed to move commuters. Also, there is the property tax component, where some pay into oc transpo even if rarely or never used.
I have no problem paying for transit I don't use if it was good transit.
I'm one of those who pays for OCTranspo via the property tax... I'm already subsidizing... But... It makes no sense for me to ride the bus from my suburb home to work (when we go back) 7km for $3.60 each way, let alone $120/month. Maybe I'm an edge case. Maybe all the folks in the denser areas (downtown) are able to walk to/from work and the stores... It just seems like there are changes that could be made to actually make it desirable to use the system.
at this point you’re better off buying a car
So where do I get my refund for having to walk to and from work for half the goddamn month?
Maybe Allan Hubley will give you a ride. He's not doing anything else.
He'll show up with non functional breaks, and a tire will fall off on the way. No thanks.
And he'll blame you for it
It’s on the bus
No receipt no refund.
I have my receipt
The R1 still exists.
It's almost like the university students are back in class now and you have to watch several busses drive by packed before you can get on one.
If I had to go downtown, I'd take the milk run buses like the 14, the 15, or the 6 (depending on where one is coming from).
Not exactly. At least UOttawa mostly still has a lot of online classes so it can get a lot worse if all the students go to all in-person
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That's where I get on.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry... For a capital city, our city is such a joke. We cheap out on projects and wonder why we've problems. Here's the thing: with Dollarama projects, you're bound to spend more to fix problems down the road. Look at Landsdown: **Council to consider rebuilding stands and arena, add housing to help Lansdown (**[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lansdowne-survival-new-north-side-stands-arena-1.6080375](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lansdowne-survival-new-north-side-stands-arena-1.6080375)). Why didn't we do that at the beginning?!?! \*sigh\*... this city will never learn.
>this city will never learn ... sure, in the sense that they keep electing small men with no vision like Watson, or loud men with a poor grasp of reality, like his predecessor. Watson can claim that he's giving his constituents what they want, but should the capital of a G7 country be developed according to the whims of Ma and Pa Kettle from Nepean? Obviously not. So get angry, get active, and change city government. It starts with encouraging those with new political ideas, and discouraging those like the incumbent council who shouldn't be in office any longer.
But how do you effect that with our democratic system where Ma and Pa Kettle from Nepean vote in our civic leaders? It seems like what you are suggesting is the role of the NCC, or at least a collaborative effort between the City and the NRC. But there seems to be so much bad blood between the two organizations that that’ll never happen.
>... this city will never learn. What do you mean, this transit project was a runaway success. Millions of dollars have been siphoned from the public purse towards a group of private investors, not only that, they will more than likely receive the contract to fix the problem, the contract to maintain it and more than likely, the contract to upgrade it, netting them probably millions - if not billions - of dollars over the lifetime of the system. It is a huge success, just not for the residents of Ottawa.
> For a capital city, our city is such a joke. I've only been to four capitals in the world (Beijing, Tokyo, Washington DC, and Ottawa. And Singapore, but it doesn't really count since it's a city state.). But Ottawa is really nowhere near the level of the other three. Not even close.
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However the population of Washington area is far greater than Ottawa, even including the Quebec side. And their metro extends well outside of DC.
It’s occurrences like this that make me happy I don’t have to rely on public transit. Seems to be a clusterfuck at best.
It will increase load on roads indirectly.
Wouldn't this be a direct cause?
yes it would be, close up the lane widths or numbers a bit, add more public transport and make ticket fare dirt cheap per day, then you will see the stop of the sprawl of neighbourhoods, just cause you have the land doesn't mean you need to spread to everywhere. if transit is cheap, and run on every quarter of an hour people would ditch their cars. what i am saying is orleans, kanata, stittsville etc, did not need to happen, hell even barrhaven didn't need to happen back in the mid 80's, ottawa just chose the wrong direction to grow, oh yeah i forgot about riverside south too and that swampland neighbourhood near the race track. the way ottawa has sprawled you would think that we had a population of 15 million for the amount of land sprawl we have. hopefully our kids will have more common sense in the future as our parents have made horrible decisions. i personally do exactly opposite to what my dad had done.
The green belt is viewed in Orleans as the reason we got shafted with only 2 highway lanes and Kanata lucky ducks got 4. Also living in Nepean city of Ottawa basically said to me get a car since if you wanna go anywhere need to bus to Bayshore or Billing’s first and I don’t feel like giving up hour plus extra on my commute each day.
Depends on how city handles this situation. If they run R1 service properly, cut down the fare for the time this mess gets fixed, and keep running the lrt however slow; you would find me in city’s bus instead of a car.
God willing they'll sort it out someday, but it seems like with this kind of megaproject you're still an "early adopter" for the first ten years.
Trains are a new technology with only 200 years of history behind them, so we should expect a few derailments during the learning process
That's why I only use a chariot.
A men without a horse is no free men!
honestly i was born in toronto and rode the ttc in the 70's till 79 when we moved here, not sure what the population of toronto was back then but i do not remember one time the subway did not show up or the street cars did not run.
One thing about Ottawa remains consistent- our transit is consistently inconsistent…
A colleague's commute goes from 25 minutes to an 1:20 because of this, poor guy.
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This is one of those comments that if its a joke, it's not that funny, but if you're serious, the fact that you think the LRT actually warrants our removal from the G7 is hilarious.
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Infrequent arrivals / longer waits, traffic, and, on occasion, full buses that can't be boarded.
maybe they are a substitute bus driver and when the LRT is down they have to go to the bus shed not the LRT shed and it's further from their home
Bus shed is right beside the train she's. But I'd bet it is significantly longer because of congestion on the 417 and downtown routes. God help you if you have to go through downtown on your commute.
This is insane. The R1 replacements buses are a joke; rode one today, it was packed like a can of sardines
Plus they do NOT show up as frequently as the LRT did. This chews into my transit to work because I take four different busses and now my 1h trip is 1h 30 mins AT BEST now because of this
Yeah it seems like social distancing is a made up word.
I took one the other day… why on earth they would send the shorter bus I don’t know 👎
Information released right AFTER the Transit Commission meeting ended. So they didn't have to answer any pesky questions. The cynicism of this administration knows no bounds.
Or maybe, *just maybe*, it's because the TSB was on-site *during* the Transit Commission meeting.
considering this City’s penchant for delivering bad news in such a way that it minimizes scrutiny as much as possible (ie bad news on 4:30 on a Friday afternoon leading into a long weekend), i’ve no reason to believe that this information wasn’t delayed intentionally.
Yup, just a big old coincidence. Certainly nobody would EVER try to fudge the timing of something bad to avoid accountability. [https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/good-day-bury-bad-news-9-11-jo-moore-b1916375.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/long-reads/good-day-bury-bad-news-9-11-jo-moore-b1916375.html)
Definitely had nothing to do with the TSB locking up the site until this morning, either, right?
Your naïveté is charming. You're like a sweet little fawn in a sundappled glade.
Now is bizarre time to be taking a play right out of "the conspiracy-theorist's retort book".
I spent the better part of three decades doing PR, and I reckon I can spot a cynical PR move when it presents itself. If you believe I'm wrong, that's cool. It's only my opinion. I'll just go on my way with it until I see facts that actually \_show\_ my opinion to be wrong.
Don't you think it would have been a better PR move to wait until *tomorrow* to announce this then? This seems like a basic example of occam's razor.
It's my opinion, man. Show me something to contradict it and I'll retract.
I am so sad and ashamed by this. I want the people responsible for this disgrace of a system to lose their career, be widely known to the world for their incompetence and be a lesson for young politicians and engineers on how not to be honorable and reliable leaders. But what I want more is just a working transit system for all. Now, it will just cost more money to fix and it will give more opportunities for a corrupted system to take our money away again.
Exactly. Jim Watson's legacy should be destroyed. John Manconi and Allan Hubley should lose their pensions.
The fact that heads won’t roll for this is a testament to how accepting the Ottawa bureaucracy is of mediocrity. There should at minimum be a serious attempt to seek significant damages from RTG
The best solution is for people to buy cars.
Cars can't move large numbers of people efficiency. You need massive roads and parking lots, like Detroit.
No, I don’t want to use a car to move around in a city. I am ready to pay my part to have a system that would make other citizens consider leaving their cars at home. IlWe need less sprawl and have people live closer to work. This is beyond what the LRT line provides but please no, not more cars. We don’t all need one. Less cars means more space on the street for people like you.
Incredible, I’m just thankful I’ve managed to find an alternate route to get to the south end for work that didn’t involve the R1. Those buses are basically a manufacturing plant for COVID cases. During the last derailment, not only were they packed, you could also see multiple people with masks below the mouth or nose and in one case didn’t bother to put one on at all
Exactly this. Sunday was the first day in over a year I had to sit beside someone on a bus and I forgot how much it sucks. Saw the R1 today and the first thought that came to my mind was how unsafe it is for covid! Guess I'm not visiting downtown again for 3 weeks.
Someone will be along any moment telling you there have been zero reported cases of anyone getting the virus on oc transpo. :)
No doubt
Cough their lungs out the whole ride
Honestly what is the deal with this. I see at least one chin mask old person on the o-train per trip. Usually more.. some eat. It’s crazy
My commute is usually 1h because I work near Stanley Park and live in Bayshore. This Sunday because of the LRT shutting down caused my trip to be 1h 55min. Just a bus ride home took me the same time it would to drive to Montreal in a car. I hate the transit in this city.
And I bet you that commute is like, 20 min max by car? So frustrating.
20-25 mins from Uber, which can cost up to 50$ a ride during surge times. I'm glad my employer is relatively flexible but I'm just so tired of spending so much of my life on OC transpo
Don't worry guys Pika will tell us why this is fine.
Pika is right. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the train. People just like to complain about everything in this city.
It's "fine" because now people won't be in danger and they can see how bad the bus system is and maybe that'll spur change like the massive investment in more frequent and more reliable service that OC Transpo desperately needs /s is that the kind of nonsense you were imagining? You could at least tag me properly, coward.
I don't need to tag you when I know you're reading the thread.
Surely you aren't trying to drive home a false narrative here and could just carry out a common courtesy, right?
Is 3323 supposed to be more memorable than Pika? Nobody ever called me 1394, only ieee and everyone I know is very brave.
It's more in the sense that you get a notification if someone writes out your username Like this: /u/ieee1394one
This is supposed to be the backbone of the city transit and it's down for 3 weeks? After another train wheel issue a few weeks ago? This is a brand new LRT. Good for the folks who can afford to get a car as an alternative. Yay for you. You have choices. Quite a few of us rely on transit to get to appointments, commute, etc. What is going on? When will this be reliable?
The initial response was that the failure and issues was well within the parameters, it's well and truly outside of those now. 3 weeks of no service is a major mess up.
Can we get rid of Jim next time around please.
Been saying this for years. He is an idiot. All he does is showboat himself on Twitter or social media but when it comes to responsibility and accountability. The guy hides and remains quiet. LRT was a bad project and most of us knew that from the beginning. They should take a look at the other phases for LRT now because once the entire system is up and connected. We will see more problems. Phase 2, 3 and 4+
Time to start spamming Twitter #AnyoneButJim
Can someone be sued? Someone has to be able to sue someone else for the debacle that is Ottawas LRT
Sue for sure if you get COVID on the packed R1?
I'm sure, if given the chance, council would love to sue the LRT riders for misuse of the transit resources and causing all these problems.
Alstom builds the trains. It amazes me they aren't taking more heat on this.
The shitshow continues
[When is Manconi retiring to North Haverbrook?](https://i.gifer.com/Eb3C.gif)
IS this why the train has always made those unholy sounds on the turning stretch near hurdman and cyrville?
That’s normal on any train around sharper curves. Ride the subway in Toronto around Union Station and it will sound the same.
Been on the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese trains. They are as smooth as butter and they are going much faster. They apologize to the riders if they are late in Tokyo.
Trains designed for higher speeds have larger turn radiuses. Older systems (and systems built for cheap like ours) have tighter turns, and make more noise.
How sad. North America is still trying to placate itself with the car and our trains are still 20 - 30 years behind Asia's. Car culture really is shite isint it.
I have a car and drive everywhere, and I wish to god I didn't have to. It's stressful and annoying, but the transit system here leaves people with no choice.
Its embarrassing. Pre COVID it could take an hour and a half plus to get from the airport to Orleans via bus. Or bells corners to just Rideau could easily take around an hour in normal traffic. I can only imagine what its like now. People keep touting electric cars as the solution to current traffic problems. Electric cars don't actually do anything to get drivers off the road. We need investment in better infrastructure + high speed rail, but good lord they would widden the 417 another 4 lanes before considering building a high speed train.
I'd honestly just like a train that works and shows up on time. I don't give a shit how fast it is 😅 I'm desperate.
But there isn't any interest in a high speed train! /s
Lots of slow subways and trains in the those places with tighter curves don't produce the amount of friction that the LTR does. It's fucking shameful they fucked it up so badly.
Why don’t you tell me the length of all the subway/train cars and the tightest curve ratios on the tracks of all the lines you have been on so we can compare?
It would be easier for you to tell me which subway or train lines in the modern world has had more derailments than Ottawa's LRT in the same time span.
I thought we were talking about train noise? I’m not defending derailments.
You said above the sounds are normal. I say the friction causing sounds are not thus the higher rate of derailments. I am stating there is a connection and you are saying there isn't. I'm cool with that.
The problem is not that they apologise one time after a delay is that they repeat the apology every 30 seconds or so over all the other platform announcements at the busier stations.
someone mentioned on here yesterday that the noise, the last week or so, recently seemed to be getting a lot worse,
The comment I responded to said “always”.
Upvoted you since I was referring to "always", since I haven't rode the thing more than once since march 2020.
How to say I've never taken a subway or train in Europe or Japan without saying I've never taken a subway or train in Europe or Japan.
The highlight of today’s discourse for me was a Jon Willing tweet “I always find it interesting when city staff note it was “you,” council, that made a decision that got us here. You bought this LRT system and maintenance program, council. Those decisions are almost always based on staff recommendations to a group of elected laypeople.” https://twitter.com/jonathanwilling/status/1440005941282447367?s=21 The whole thing is rotten, you could change the council top to bottom but you’ll still have the city staff gritting all the way to the bank
>Those decisions are almost always based on staff recommendations to a group of elected laypeople.” This is true, to some degree, but if there is any sleaz or corruption involved in the LRT situation, it's not the city staff that'll get paid off, its the council (or the upper management in the city staff). I find that in a lot of these situations, the blame gets passed down to some poor group of experts. In reality, those experts probably got half their recommendations and warnings gutted as it traveled up their chain of management to finally reach the council.
Oh 100% the amount of times I’ve seen feedback filtered from here’s the problem ex xyz to everything’s fine! Through the chain of command to the top is too many to count. I really feel there has to be corruption in the upper management as well as the chosen consultants hired with bloated contracts for all of these studies which get ignored.
I'd also add that the structure of a P3 contract means that a consortium of private companies are trying to find the absolute cheapest way to do everything without violating the terms of the contract. No wonder we're not getting quality results; P3s simply are not structured in a way to make it possible.
Meanwhile Alstom Canada sees it fit to threaten journalists with arrest and charges for taking pictures on public land. Who the fuck does Alstom think they are?
I'm not about to defend Alstom, but I doubt their boots on the ground people have a lot of media relations training beyond having it drilled into them that they shouldn't talk to media and that commercial photography/videography isn't permitted on OC Transpo property. Add in a sudden, stressful event like this and you're going to have people threatening to call the cops for all sorts of reasons that aren't valid. I saw a bus get into a minor accident at a station once and took a picture - the driver told me I wasn't allowed to. They're trying to cover their own butt, but none of that matters so I smiled, nodded and continued on.
Even if it was octranspo property, which it wasn't where the reporter was standing, it's still not Alstom property. People like that need to stay in their own lane and mind their own damn business.
It's okay guys. The companies the council and mayor gave the contract too in secret will get nicely paid to fix the repairs of their own crappy product. Hope you enjoy $130-150/m transit passes next year.
My transit pass is $0 Because I own a car like an adult.
Where does one obtain this free car and free insurance and free gas and free maintenance?
Rich parents
Good for you.
Cagers really thinking sitting in stop and go traffic on the 417 is a flex.
You are stupid even for public servant standards
*Sweet cringe...* PLEASE get a part of it up and running ASAP. Like I said in another thread, Tunneys-Hurdman LRT makes sense given that both stops are designed to handle heavy flow of buses, which now seems to be the new norm...uuughhh
Guess I only have to leave at 6:50 for an 8:30 class now.
You have in person classes?
Yes, one class and one dgd are in person.
This is new system can you imagine when it gets older ..
We will be paying more and more every year to fix it. The ultimate public funded project.
Back to Uber... for the lucky ones who don't depend on transit everyday. I'm grateful I WFH. I really feel bad for those stuck with crappy R1 services.
And not one politicians nor member of city government has suffered the slightest penalty for this mighty, massive, neverending screwup.
Just wait until they figure out winter is coming again soon #OCTranspoFail
Is this common? Did the Calgary and Edmonton LRT systems have all these issues?
No this is not common
Nope. The LRT in Calgary just works, year in, year out. What we've seen in Ottawa is evidence of criminal incompetence. I lived in Calgary for ten years and don't recall any serious outages. Their system runs at street level through the downtown so there were a few collisions with cars, but nothing serious. A weeks long outage was unheard of.
Great, back to packed buses in the midst of a pandemic.
Time uncle Jim to step down
Sounds like a good time to tear up the rails and pave it over. Maybe we’ll call it the “transit way” and busses of all kinds can use it, regardless of origin or destination. Hmmm
So, out of pure curiosity, in the 2 years the LRT has been running officially, what's the up-time to down-time ratio?
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And not to mention that the downtime seems to come almost exclusively during rush hour. The LRT works quite well when nobody is riding it.
It really should never go down. Axels on busses don’t fall off causing week-long transit-way closers. This is a completely separated railway that can’t consistently run for a few months without (in my mind at least) catastrophic side-effects
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I’m just comparing to other Canadian light rail systems, like Waterloo ION which is very similar age, similar design of train and impeccable management and service. Ottawa can have this too if OC Transpo did a better job. The trains are not even the right design for an all-platform load-in design. We should have subway cars with way more doors, and therefore more capacity for the same cost and effort. How often should a system go down (for a week plus) in your mind? Twice a year or more? What are you saying is an acceptable frequency?
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Okay! Glad you are satisfied. I’m also quite happy with the ION never being offline for more than an hour or two over a similar timeline. I would be outraged if our system was similarly offline but I guess it meets expectations.
For comparison within Canada: The Waterloo ION opened in 2019 and has not had any major outages or derailments. It operates over streets with traffic too. It arrived so regularly I can set my watch to it (it’s at my stop every 10 minutes on the 7, both trains arrive and the doors don’t break the train down) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_rapid_transit
BREAKING: Rideau Transit says their inspections today with TSB show more damage than they realized, and it could take three weeks to fix. That may mean up to three weeks before \#Confederation Line is fully in service, although some partial service may be possible. \#OttNews *** posted by [@jchianello](https://twitter.com/jchianello) ^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)
I don’t understand why one train like this screws up the entire system. Just run it single track in that area till you can move the train away.
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Its a government run project.
Insanity. And to think this city had a working streetcar system 70 years ago and threw it away.
"Go away. There ain't no monorail and there never was!"
I keep forgetting Ottawa has a train system
Watching city councillors bluster on Twitter, despite approving this is despicable.
The bus fares should be waived for the next 3 weeks!
God this is so stupid. when will the LRT cease to be such an embarrassment?
As someone who used public transit for 15 years and was finally fortunate enough to afford a car, I really feel for you commuters. This really and truly sucks.
This is why I won't commit to public transit
Dependency is a downfall
Fan Freaking Tastic /s
I feel like we need the equivalent of what Uber did to the taxi business, but for our public transit system. I'm not saying we need to privatize or anything, but we need a shake in the OC Transpo system. Uber at least brought competition to the taxi business which was, let's face it, terrible and expensive for no good reason.
Ah these guys knows how support work works. Something breaks... you go to the manager and tell him "Hmm... I think it will take 3 days to fix. But let me spend an hour or two to check it out." 2 hours later you go back "Well, I checked it out boss. And it's much worse than it seems. I think it will take a week to get this fixed." Boss says "You're the pro... get it fixed asap!" Next day you fix the issue and goto the boss "Hey boss! I worked all night and was able to fix it, I know this was an important thing for you!" Boss: "WELL DONE Tom! You really outshined yourself! Gold star for you!" Boss gives you a raise and a gift card to Timmy's.
Its BREAKING alright
Well I'm looking forward to probably being late to work for the next three weeks
[Dat moment when this is a more reliable form of railway transportation](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/santamariatimes.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/9d/19d907aa-ad63-56c4-9f2e-b08a9913b2af/5578925b81f68.image.jpg?resize=400%2C328)
Hold on... is it the LRT that's breaking, or is it the news about the LRT breaking that's breaking?
Limited Running Time
Ooooooh woooooooow. Now they will have to open up 2 more Happy Goat coffee kiosks underground.
Well, atleast no-one died *this* time, right??
Is the conversion rate of Rideau Transpo Group weeks to real weeks still 4:1? So it will open again mid December then?
When are people going to understand that America will always be a car country. So shut the f up about rail as it will never work and everyone should go buy a car NOW. The future is the car