Councillors take a long, crowded ride and don’t like it 
OC Transpo officials said they’ve already added a few extra trips or relocated bigger buses to ease congestion on some overcrowded routes, but major changes will take months, or even up to a year, if they require a change in drivers’ schedules or a new budget.
“Many of the changes are seen by customers as being negative, but that’s what we knew we were getting into with the service changes and that level of budget reductions,” said OC Transpo manager Pat Scrimgeour.
OC Transpo general manager Alain Mercier said delays leaving the downtown core during rush hour have been reduced to eight minutes from 20 minutes, but afternoon rush service won’t be significantly improved until the LRT is built.
“We have run out of road surface to run the system through,” said Mercier.
Kanata Coun. Marianne Wilkinson said her constituents see all the express buses fly by without stopping because they’re full, leaving people with no way home. She rode the bus and found the complaint to be true.
“The one I was on, it was a short bus and it was dangerous,” she said.
She’s most concerned about cuts to service to the Kanata Research Park.
“There are 20,000 jobs, and half of that business park has zero service,” she said. “(Cisco is) hiring 300 more people, young people who use the bus, and they’re desperate.”
Changes
Some of the changes implemented since Sept. 4:
- Added capacity. By relocating a bigger bus from another line: Routes 4, 30, 34, 38, 41, 87, 93, 130, 134.
- Added trips. At least one new trip during peak times: Routes 30, 131, 134, 136, 106.
- Restored service to the Ottawa Hospital ring road by year’s end.
Tawfik Mohammed, who works for Research in Motion in the Kanata Research Park, said he and his colleagues “are now being forced to consider alternatives to mass transit.” There used to be a direct bus through the park, but now bus commuters have to walk 20 minutes or wait for a crowded bus that comes once an hour and takes a winding route through a residential neighbourhood, he said. Mohammed created these Google maps to show the change. At left is the old route. On the right is the new milk run.
