Detailed Review Needed Before Any New Bus Rapid Transit Investment

Ottawa, November 26, 2007: The Friends of the O-Train (FOTO) have discovered disturbing trends in the finances and BRT operations of Ottawa’s Transit Services. Transit Committee is debating Transit Services’ revenue-cost ratio, which has fallen from 55% to 45% between 1997 and 2007. New revelations suggest work needs to be done to improve Ottawa’s transit cost structure. According to the City of Ottawa’s current and historical budget documents, during the four year period from 2004 to 2008 (budget) Transit Services:

* Gross Expenditures have ballooned from $222 million in 2004, to a projected $330 million in 2008, a 49% increase.
* Compensation and Benefits have grown 50%.
* Fleet Costs have grown 35%.
* Yet, total passenger trips have grown only 9%.

In addition to the city’s budget documents, FOTO also disclosed startling findings from the results of its detailed analysis of the City’s Transitway operations:

* Every weekday there are 4,869 bus runs on the Transitway, traveling over 62,000 service kilometres.
* Annually, ‘Out-of-Service’ buses (also known as ‘dead-heads’) travel almost 3.5 million kilometers… with no passengers. This is enough distance to go to the moon nine times or circle the earth 86 times.
* Not including congestion-related increases in fuel consumption, 11.5 million litres of diesel fuel is consumed on the Transitway annually, at least 3.8 million litres of this is combusted in the downtown core.

On Wednesday City Council is to debate a motion to allow staff to appropriate over $400 million federal and provincial funding, specified for light rail transit service, and use this money on bus Transitway projects instead.

“With no public process and no business case whatsoever, the city is now seeking Council’s approval for massive spending on bus Transitway projects,” said FOTO spokesperson Klaus Beltzner. “As you know, FOTO fully supports increased investment in public transit, but it must be smart investment. In our view, it is time to stop throwing good money into a broken system, Ottawa needs light rail transit and it needs it now.”

According to a City-commissioned McCormick Rankin report “Overview Assessment of Rail and Bus Technologies”, published in May 2005 for the failed North-South LRT Project, electric light rail annual operating costs are 17% lower than bus rapid transit (BRT).

Last week City staff disclosed that customer satisfaction ratings for Transit Services were among the lowest across 20 categories of services provided by the City, compared to a much higher rating at the previous Decima survey in 2004.

Friends of the O-Train

Formed in the summer of 2006, FOTO is a volunteer organization of transit experts, community leaders and environmentalists concerned about improving Ottawa’s transit effectiveness and value. The organization is now affiliated with Transport 2000 Canada.

Contact:

Mobile: Klaus Beltzner, 613-220-6631

http://friendsoftheotrain.org