Pellerin: Let OC Transpo know every time something isn’t right

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The Rideau Canal Skateway hadn’t been open for half a day last weekend when already my social media feeds were full of pictures of happy smiling people enjoying the gorgeous ice.

The last time skating on the canal was any good was during the convoy occupation, three winters ago. To say Ottawans know how to be patient would be a spectacular understatement. Sometimes too much so.

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National Capital Commission crews had been trying very hard to get the Skateway going those past two winters, but one thing they can’t control is the weather. As the NCC’s Tobi Nussbaum told the Citizen, to be able to open this early in 2025 took lighter maintenance vehicles, proper winter weather, lots of patience and a touch of magic.

We badly need some of that fairy dust sprinkled onto our transit system after many years of suffering through one unrealized improvement after another. I for one have had it and I know I’m not alone.

Tuesday morning’s brief Line 1 LRT outage was the straw that broke this camel’s back.

I needed to be downtown before 8:30 a.m. I left my home in Westboro a hair past 7:30 a.m., a departure perfectly timed for the bus the transit app assured me, swearing with its digital right hand on a stack of GPS data, was two minutes away from my stop.

It wasn’t.

I know there’s a problem right now with bus cancellations because of maintenance backlogs unless it’s operator shortages (or both), but even before that, those transit apps we’re encouraged to use were notoriously unreliable.

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You stand at the stop and watch the app say the bus is right there when it isn’t, before going back to saying it’s 12 minutes away. Then out of the blue, without GPS warning, two of them show up one behind the other.

Whose data are those apps tracking, exactly? Houdini’s?

On Tuesday, entirely unpredicted by the app, an 11 showed up that took me to Tunney’s Pasture where I got on the LRT and… sat for many long and boring minutes. “HELD,” the sign said, as though we couldn’t tell we weren’t going anywhere.

They never told us what the issue was, but people kept boarding the train, which at some point made this claustrophobic human bolt for the platform.

I was debating walking back home when the train started moving away from me. I took the next one and got to my destination shortly after 8:30 a.m. I could have walked downtown faster.

I write these lines perfectly conscious that most of you have had worse experiences using transit in the last few years. So, I’ve decided, enough is enough. If we don’t make ourselves seen and heard, nothing will improve. Time to become this town’s most annoying squeaky wheel.

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We need to let OC Transpo know every time something is not right. By phone, by text, tagging them on social media. I don’t care if you want to use smoke signals or even primitive communications methods like email. Just let them know.

“Hey, OC Transpo, thought you’d like to know the 82 that was supposed to be here five minutes ago just disappeared from the app.”

“Hey, OC Transpo, thought you’d like to know Line 1 westbound has been stuck at Tremblay for seven minutes.”

“Hey, OC Transpo, thought you’d like to know two 282s in a row failed to show.”

“Hey, OC Transpo, thought you’d like to know Parliament Station still smells like a sewer.”

You get the idea. It’s important to avoid getting angry or verbally unpleasant, because toxicity never wins allies, but we can totally be annoying. At this point it’s basically self-defence. We were told the LRT would bring major improvements. It opened in 2019 and we’re still waiting.

Ottawans’ unflappability is legendary. But on transit, we’re way too patient for our own good. It’s time to get squeaking, until we get better service.

Brigitte Pellerin (they/them) is an Ottawa writer.

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