This is a letter from Michael Richardson to area MPs.
The transit strike is now approaching it's third month.
We are told that even if they settle tomorrow, that the lack of maintenance means that we will not have service resume for months.
This could only be the case if we were in fact heading for such a ridiculous situation again without the strike. This happened in 2008.
Ottawa's new TMP proposes 65km of new busways, yet does not solve the problem of downtown bus congestion for over a decade, and when it does, it does not even extend the LRT along sensible routes, or cross the greenbelt. And the buses continue to run next to the LRT.
There will be no reduction, even in 2031, in the operating costs of the system, which this strike is apparently about.
This transit strike is mostly about the difficulty of scheduling the huge number of transit operators needed to deal with the morning and afternoon peak: No solution involving one transit operator per 60
patrons is going to help, or as we say in the computer industry, "scale"
To make it work, you need bigger vehicles. That means LRT.
Yes,
I AM SAYING THAT THE STRIKE IS DUE TO LACK OF LRT.
Let me say that again:
NO LRT => BUS STRIKE
The failed 2006 NS LRT boondongle plan would not have helped, as it did NOT use longer trains. It was to be run as a tram system. That was one of the major flaws of the system, and one of the reasons is was so expensive to build.
The Friends of the O-train plan, had it been started in 2007, would
have been done by the end of 2009!
As my MPP, my premier and the minister of municipal affairs, could you please:
1. Ensure that any new Ottawa transit plans are cost-effective. This means more than just capital costs. This means operating costs, including transit operator wages.
2. Bring this strike to a rapid end (even if this means firing our entire city council by appointing a superintendant)
3. Ensure that the city's Transportation Master Plan is revised properly to include the directives passed by previous councils. Council repeated asked that all rail cooridors be included, yet they were removed by staff.
It does me no good to lobby councillors, who then pass resolutions which are then ignored. The TMP must make the most use of existing capital assets, including the underused rail to Leitrim, the city-owned Prince-of-Wales rail bridge, and lines between Ottawa, Kanata, Carp, Arnprior, Fallowfield, Richmond, Smiths Falls, Brockville, Casselman, Embrun and Alexandria.
Your superintendant will likely have to fire the planning staff.
Your superintendant should also investigate where former planning staff have gone to work, and how much influence those companies have had on our "official" plans. In the software industry, we would
say that "There is a smell."
4. Consider placing transit in the Ottawa area under the control of GO.
Michael.