The transit file will be tough for Ottawa's next city council
Ridership and revenues have nowhere near recovered in the 2.5 years since COVID hit
When the pandemic shut down the world in March 2020 and people withdrew to work or study from home, OC Transpo's ridership vanished almost overnight.
The transit agency has been hoping to climb back out of that crater ever since.
This city has seen more than its share of transit woes — from light rail problems that escalated into a public inquiry to regular complaints about buses that don't show up — but the pandemic seems to have created structural problems the incoming city council will need to confront.
Many CBC Ottawa readers say transit is an important issue for them, and candidates in this fall's election have identified the file is in disarray.
"I think people have lost confidence in the public transit system and we need to fix it," Mark Sutcliffe has said on the mayoral campaign trail.
"If people can't get to where they need to be on time, if they can't afford to ride transit every day, then their city is failing them," said Catherine McKenney, when announcing their transit platform.
"OC Transpo was once the darling of transit companies across North America," Bob Chiarelli stated last week. "That reputation is now in tatters."
All three promise a major review of OC Transpo as one of their first orders of business, if elected on Monday, Oct. 24.
Public transit is, after all, a core service — one that costs $700 million per year to operate.
But solutions, when fewer people are paying fares or no longer follow the travel patterns they used to, will be far from easy.
A slow recovery
Every month, the transit commission is shown a chart of how ridership compares to the "before times" of 2019.
In the past two and a half years, the graphs were at times abysmal — at one point, the new light rail line carried only 10 per cent of its former riders.
The City of Ottawa said it can't yet provide data to show if the typically busy period after Labour Day finally saw a bump this year, but figures to the end of August show ridership still sitting at less than half of pre-pandemic levels.
When compared to Statistics Canada data, Ottawa is lagging the national average of 62 per cent of riders being back on board.
The city is also falling short of its own projections for how ridership would bounce back — a few transit commissioners warned those forecasts were too lofty back when they were plugged into the budget.
It means the department is facing a huge financial hole, again. Upper orders of government have filled it the past two years by way of COVID recovery programs.
The city's chief financial officer is waiting on the provincial government to give a precise amount and date, but Wendy Stephanson said she's confident Ottawa will yet again be rescued.
It's not clear how long the city will keep getting that reprieve, though.
The federal government just closed consultations for setting up a big, permanent fund to pay for new transit infrastructure, but a consistent tap that might flow money for the operations side is another question.
Sutcliffe points out the pandemic has "fundamentally changed" the fare revenue OC Transpo brings in, and has promised to make the transit operating deficit his top priority in talks with the federal government.
McKenney, meanwhile, hopes the gap will be filled, but also makes a multi-million dollar, multi-year spending promise to add service. By 2026, a city hall run by McKenney would spend an extra $71 million a year on transit in a bid to make up for what they say was lost a during "route optimization" a decade ago, and when buses were replaced by LRT.
$3.70 per ride
Meanwhile, there's an oft-stated fear that prices will deter riders from coming back, especially if habits have changed during the pandemic.
Riders now pay $3.70 with each tap of the Presto card, or $125.50 for an adult monthly pass. By comparison, the Toronto Transit Commission charges about 50 cents less for a single ride, but a higher monthly rate.
McKenney and Sutcliffe have both promised to freeze fares — Sutcliffe for a year, and McKenney for the four-year term. In Sutcliffe's view, it's not fair to raise prices when the system needs fixing.
Expect a debate on how to pay for transit to come early after the election.
An update to the long-term plan for how to pay for transit in Ottawa was due this past June. Staff have pushed it to the new council term, waiting for ridership to stabilize.
One discussion is likely to be whether it's still desirable — or possible — to count on those Presto taps for 45 per cent of revenues, while letting property tax bills cover the rest.
Will more of the cost need to be borne by taxes over fares? Will the 2.5 per cent annual increases be locked in for more years?
Sutcliffe had released statements in August, warning that McKenney would push for "free transit," and shift the entire cost to the tax bill, adding hundreds more a year per property.
Instead, McKenney released a platform that promises only to let children ride free until age 18. Currently, children pay a fare at age eight.
Council asked staff to look into a study about free transit, and a memo produced by the treasurer in July said it would cost $700,000 to $900,000. The timing meant it never went before the finance committee and never got a green light.
Where riders want to go
The other major question for Ottawa's transit network, again highlighted by the pandemic and the work-from-home trend, is whether OC Transpo is even taking riders where they now need to go.
Much of the system is predicated on a trip to a hub, and transferring to another bus or train. Some suburban areas feel that design leaves them few buses for short trips within or between suburbs.
Residents in Barrhaven, for instance, describe being a mini-city of 100,000 without the transit network to match.
OC Transpo has adapted in a few ways, such as by adding Route 110 between Barrhaven and the Kanata tech park, or cutting some routes to downtown that had low ridership.
Sutcliffe's platform promises to "modernize and optimize OC Transpo bus service to reflect the post-COVID reality."
He said some riders shouldn't make multiple transit transfers and take long rides, while other buses run nearly empty.
"I think there's room for us to revisit where everyone's going, what time they're going there, and what kind of service we can deliver that can serve the most people," he told CBC News.
McKenney, meanwhile, said getting more buses and drivers into places like Kanata, Barrhaven and Orléans is key.
"We don't have the number of people commuting in and out of downtown, so that hub-and-spoke model, we need to rethink that."
As for that other, big-vision plan to extend light rail to Barrhaven, Stittsville and Kanata, nine of the 14 mayoral candidates who answered CBC's election survey said they support LRT Stage 3. Notably, Bob Chiarelli said he would first have to review the project's requirements.
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