On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

From PBS on a trend in public transit:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/some-cities-turn-to-free-public-busing-to-counteract-inequity

From an activist group in Ottawa:

https://www.ottawatransitriders.ca/wfh_could_be_a_golden_opportunity_for_better_transit

From the Transport Politic blog:

https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2023/01/12/openings-and-construction-starts-planned-for-2023/

I'd like to think that all of these things are good news telling of helpful things in progress.

Three jobs applied to today.

(And yet another offer from a company I'm not familiar with asking me to take up a contract in Toronto. I can't afford to move. Not yet, anyway.)

Watching full city council arguing over whether to go with an investigation by the city's auditor-general or a full judicial inquiry re: what exactly went wrong re: the first expansion of Ottawa's LRT system and why. It's been going for the better part of five hours so far, still in progress as I type this. It's gotten rather heated at times!

I see that New Shepherd 18 went without a hitch. Eleven minutes and, at age 90, William Shatner is now an astronaut in addition to everything else he's been across the decades, flawed as he's been.

What else? I think that I realized yesterday that I'd forgotten that I'd been borrowing a CPAP machine for at least a year before actually purchasing one. Memory issues...

Public transit...there's a topic.

My understanding of the current state of OC Transpo and STO across the river in Gatineau goes like this: the buses and trains here are usually, at worst, ¾ empty. Everyone aboard has mostly managed to keep their distance from each other, and masks are standard good-manners practice. I can't afford to not use it if I want to leave my neighbourhood to do anything outside of it.

I keep paying for my monthly bus pass despite my lack of usage because they're a continuing target for deficit hawks, and they need the money to maintain the facilities and fleets for when Pandemic is finally over. Even if the levels of demand-for-service stay reduced afterward, the transit services have to be able to do their work safely.

Ten years ago, I had some thoughts about an LRT line running under or parallel to Bank Street.

Three days ago, one Clinton P. Desveaux is picking up the banner in his own way with an opinion piece at LinkedIn. Details here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ottawa-bank-street-o-train-tunnel-clinton-p-desveaux/

Thoughts?

At least McKenzie King Bridge Station will see some more bus-catching traffic again for a few more months...?

https://ottawastart.com/rideau-street-to-close-april-26-for-renewal-work/

And here we go with the public transit consequences.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/oc-transpo-covid-19-schedules-1.5508792

I paid for next month, and I'm not planning to cancel. Why? Because, regardless of where this mess takes us next, I might actually need to use the service.

So we're winding down an era of public transit history here on the Ottawa side of the river this weekend.

Route 95 was part of my life from the day I started taking classes at Algonquin. Since I live on the other end of the city - even pre-amalgamation, this was true - from the Baseline campus, Route 95 was an essential component of getting around town. Officially, I lived in Gloucester for the first year, Cumberland for the second, and my classes were in Nepean. But, still...it was all Ottawa, or it was all going to have to become one Ottawa eventually. Mike Harris' shotgun civic marriage plans in the works or not.

Route 95 was the glue that was binding them together. And now, supposedly, the O-Train Confederation Line is taking over from that. The vision is incomplete for now, but Phase 2 pre-construction tree-clearing and suchlike is underway. So that's going to happen. Barring a total disaster in federal and provincial funding not coming through, which...I suppose is possible in the next three weeks once the 2019 federal election is done.

It makes getting around town a little more complicated than it was. No more single-route bus-rides straight into Centretown and Lowertown West/ByWard Market and Sandy Hill.

It's going to take some adjustment.

Have a look at this:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/oc-transpo-overtime-costs-rising-1.5200845

Noting this quotation in particular from the article:

"The city handed layoff notices to 345 transit operators last August. At the time, the Confederation Line was expected to be up and running by November. That deadline and several subsequent ones have come and gone, and it's now hoped the trains will be running by September.

Many of those layoff notices have since been rescinded, but some drivers have moved on to other jobs. As of June 1, the city had 76 fewer drivers than it had in April 2018, and overall there are 140 job vacancies."

I am thinking that those layoffs were a mistake in themselves. Also, the long-standing assumption that OC Transpo will need fewer buses once the trains are up and running is an error that's going to backfire on us passengers. If the O-Train lines work as we hope, there's going to be more passengers on those buses feeding into and out of the Trillium and Confederation Lines. And more people needing to get around those portions of the city that don't get directly served by the train lines, as well.

So, they'd better not shed those buses and drivers.

Another test of the new O-Train line this week...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/lrt-smoke-test-belfast-yard-1.5051700