OC Transpo

[Brannwagon]

Originally Posted by roger1818

[rant]it’s not the mortality rate that’s scary. It’s the 8.5% hospitalization rate that’s scary. Without flattening the curve, our hospitals would be overrun. That mortality rate is with proper medical care. Then there is all the people who would die of other curable diseases and injuries because the hospitals are filled with COVID patients.[/rant]

This.

It's not the virus itself that's dangerous (for most people), it's the unmanageable burden it would put on the healthcare system if everyone caught it at once.

I really liked the #FlattenTheCurve messaging that we saw a lot of during the first wave. It was easy for people to identify the goal of our efforts - that being keep the number of active cases low enough to remain within the healthcare system's capacity. I'm not sure why it appears as though that hashtag has disappeared during the second wave.

[Gat-Train]

Sweden's response was just fine, according to one WHO representative

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

What's outlandish is spending all this money because we're afraid of a flu with a 98% survival rate. And if you're young and healthy, it's more like 99.99%.

It's not the flu.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

What's outlandish is spending all this money because we're afraid of a flu with a 98% survival rate. And if you're young and healthy, it's more like 99.99%.

Wow....I guess we have uninformed arrogant morons here in Ottawa as well.

[Nowhere]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Sweden's response was just fine, according to one WHO representative

Sweden has a completely different culture than Canada. Scandinavian people tend to be more disciplined and introverted than North Americans, which sure helps against a virus. Swedes also tend to keep more distance from strangers when possible, regardless of whether there's a pandemic or not.

[danduc]

Originally Posted by Nowhere

Sweden has a completely different culture than Canada. Scandinavian people tend to be more disciplined and introverted than North Americans, which sure helps against a virus. Swedes also tend to keep more distance from strangers when possible, regardless of whether there's a pandemic or not.

Not quite: Sweden case is more complicated than that and not a one size fits all.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/swed...nse-experiment

[TransitZilla]

Over in the Confederation Line west thread, the discussion headed in the direction of service to the DND campus at Carling, and I asked the question about why the busway through the campus only has service in one direction.

The effect of this is that the westbound route 66, which serves Carling campus before heading west to Kanata, must complete the full loop twice:



The bus turns left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, left from Moodie to Carling AGAIN, and then continues to Kanata.

The Travel Planner even lets us quantify how much time this takes, because each trip serves the Carling/Grandview stop twice, once on each loop, 3 minutes apart:



But, wait, route 58 to Lincoln Fields does almost the exact same thing! Left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, and then right from Moodie to Carling:

[/url]

So how much is it costing per year to go around in circles?

We know that the loop adds 3 minutes to each trip.
There are 16 trips on route 66 to Kanata each weekday.
There are 35 trips on route 58 Lincoln Fields each weekday that serve Carling Campus.
In total, 51 trips per day doing the loop.
There are 261 working days per year

3 minutes * 51 trips * 261 working days = 39,933 minutes on weekdays

Saturdays: 3 * 15 trips * 52 = 2,340 minutes

Sundays: 3 * 10 trips * 52 (excluding holidays) = 1,560 minutes

Total: 43,833 minutes or 730.55 service hours

Assuming the cost per service hour is approx. $130 (see here), then the yearly cost for this loop is nearly $95,000.

What's silly is that the bus platform already exists on the opposite side of the busway road at DND:


Literally all that needs to be done is to paint a crosswalk, install a bus stop flag, possibly a shelter, and voila- the routes can run in both directions on the busway and avoid the loop. Faster trip for customers and $95K per year saved.

[caveat.doctor]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Over in the Confederation Line west thread, the discussion headed in the direction of service to the DND campus at Carling, and I asked the question about why the busway through the campus only has service in one direction.

The effect of this is that the westbound route 66, which serves Carling campus before heading west to Kanata, must complete the full loop twice:

The bus turns left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, left from Moodie to Carling AGAIN, and then continues to Kanata.

The Travel Planner even lets us quantify how much time this takes, because each trip serves the Carling/Grandview stop twice, once on each loop, 3 minutes apart:



But, wait, route 58 to Lincoln Fields does almost the exact same thing! Left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, and then right from Moodie to Carling:

[/url]

So how much is it costing per year to go around in circles?

We know that the loop adds 3 minutes to each trip.
There are 16 trips on route 66 to Kanata each weekday.
There are 35 trips on route 58 Lincoln Fields each weekday that serve Carling Campus.
In total, 51 trips per day doing the loop.
There are 261 working days per year

3 minutes * 51 trips * 261 working days = 39,933 minutes on weekdays

Saturdays: 3 * 15 trips * 52 = 2,340 minutes

Sundays: 3 * 10 trips * 52 (excluding holidays) = 1,560 minutes

Total: 43,833 minutes or 730.55 service hours

Assuming the cost per service hour is approx. $130 (see here), then the yearly cost for this loop is nearly $95,000.

What's silly is that the bus platform already exists on the opposite side of the busway road at DND:


Literally all that needs to be done is to paint a crosswalk, install a bus stop flag, possibly a shelter, and voila- the routes can run in both directions on the busway and avoid the loop. Faster trip for customers and $95K per year saved.

Awesome write up! Need to send this to OC Transpo. Besides this there's of course the time spent aboard for everyone heading west. Most everyone actually going to Carling Campus just gets off at the Crystal Bay Education Centre on Moodie and crosses the street - way faster than staying aboard, waiting at the lights on Moodie/Carling and again on Carling to turn into the campus.

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Over in the Confederation Line west thread, the discussion headed in the direction of service to the DND campus at Carling, and I asked the question about why the busway through the campus only has service in one direction.

The effect of this is that the westbound route 66, which serves Carling campus before heading west to Kanata, must complete the full loop twice:



The bus turns left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, left from Moodie to Carling AGAIN, and then continues to Kanata.

The Travel Planner even lets us quantify how much time this takes, because each trip serves the Carling/Grandview stop twice, once on each loop, 3 minutes apart:



But, wait, route 58 to Lincoln Fields does almost the exact same thing! Left from Moodie to Carling, left into DND, left back onto Moodie, and then right from Moodie to Carling:

[/url]

So how much is it costing per year to go around in circles?

We know that the loop adds 3 minutes to each trip.
There are 16 trips on route 66 to Kanata each weekday.
There are 35 trips on route 58 Lincoln Fields each weekday that serve Carling Campus.
In total, 51 trips per day doing the loop.
There are 261 working days per year

3 minutes * 51 trips * 261 working days = 39,933 minutes on weekdays

Saturdays: 3 * 15 trips * 52 = 2,340 minutes

Sundays: 3 * 10 trips * 52 (excluding holidays) = 1,560 minutes

Total: 43,833 minutes or 730.55 service hours

Assuming the cost per service hour is approx. $130 (see here), then the yearly cost for this loop is nearly $95,000.

What's silly is that the bus platform already exists on the opposite side of the busway road at DND:


Literally all that needs to be done is to paint a crosswalk, install a bus stop flag, possibly a shelter, and voila- the routes can run in both directions on the busway and avoid the loop. Faster trip for customers and $95K per year saved.

Your proposal makes sense and will save OC money. So of course its doomed.

[Multi-modal]

Sometimes I feel like the Transit Commissioners are so close to asking the right questions, but just don't quite get there or are interrupted by Hubley.

I really want one of them to ask "Mr. Manconi, you have stated that we are not considering service cuts at this time, which I agree with. However, will OC Transpo work on modifying service to reduce peak period commuter service aimed at downtown office workers (i.e. routes that have experienced the greatest ridership drop) and increase all-day service on routes that have experienced the lowest ridership drop. By adjusting service in this way, is there
an opportunity to increase ridership, reduce crowding, and increase fare collection."

I mean, we're bleeding money, but can we at least bleed money in a way that is trying to build ridership on routes that have growth potential during and after the pandemic?

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

Sometimes I feel like the Transit Commissioners are so close to asking the right questions, but just don't quite get there or are interrupted by Hubley.

I really want one of them to ask "Mr. Manconi, you have stated that we are not considering service cuts at this time, which I agree with. However, will OC Transpo work on modifying service to reduce peak period commuter service aimed at downtown office workers (i.e. routes that have experienced the greatest ridership drop) and increase all-day service on routes that have experienced the lowest ridership drop. By adjusting service in this way, is there
an opportunity to increase ridership, reduce crowding, and increase fare collection."

I mean, we're bleeding money, but can we at least bleed money in a way that is trying to build ridership on routes that have growth potential during and after the pandemic?

I agree 100% with this. I don't think leaving service exactly as it was before is the best play here.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

I agree 100% with this. I don't think leaving service exactly as it was before is the best play here.

In the long term, if definitely won't be left as-is. But until we know exactly how commuting and transit will look in the future, leaving it as-is is the only real option in order to capture as much potential ridership recovery as possible.

The budget targets 70% ridership recovery (which is just a guesstimate, as Manconi put it). Cutting any service is going to hinder that goal.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

In the long term, if definitely won't be left as-is. But until we know exactly how commuting and transit will look in the future, leaving it as-is is the only real option in order to capture as much potential ridership recovery as possible.

The budget targets 70% ridership recovery (which is just a guesstimate, as Manconi put it). Cutting any service is going to hinder that goal.

I'm not saying cut service, I'm saying shift service allocation. Admittedly, OC Transpo is working with constantly fluctuating and incomplete data and it will be difficult for them to shift service perfectly as they go - but its better than sticking with a pre-pandemic service pattern that you know isn't allocating resources as well as it could be.

*Edit - I'll add that during Transit Commission someone asked how the transit ridership recovery has compared to the recovery of traffic volumes on City streets. Manconi answered something to the effect of "Traffic volumes have recovered in different ways: we know that traffic volumes are lower coming from Orleans to downtown, for example, but traffic within Orleans is still high as people are going to get their groceries and so forth". So essentially, if they are seeing that change in travel patterns in personal car traffic, then why are we not reflecting this in our transit system?

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

I'm not saying cut service, I'm saying shift service allocation. Admittedly, OC Transpo is working with constantly fluctuating and incomplete data and it will be difficult for them to shift service perfectly as they go - but its better than sticking with a pre-pandemic service pattern that you know isn't allocating resources as well as it could be.

Shifting service is effectively a "cut" to some areas.

The urbanist in me wants to give up on the suburbs because we all know ridership recovery isn't going to be as significant as in other parts of the city. But altruistically that can't be done.. there are undoubtedly still people, maybe not as many, who still use connexion services, and some of those other frequent services that don't look like they're capturing as much ridership.

So long as there is a single person who uses any of those services even occasionally, reallocating that service would affect them, and in our current state that effect could be extremely detrimental to them, and future recovery of ridership.

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

*Edit - I'll add that during Transit Commission someone asked how the transit ridership recovery has compared to the recovery of traffic volumes on City streets. Manconi answered something to the effect of "Traffic volumes have recovered in different ways, we know that traffic volumes are lower coming from the Orleans, for example, to downtown, but traffic within Orleans is still high as people are going to get their groceries and so forth". So essentially, they are seeing that change in travel patterns in personal car traffic, why are we not reflecting this in our transit system?

Yes, we absolutely should make adjustments based on new travel patterns. I would suspect that in the future (and made easier with Stage 2) we will be gutting connexion services and implementing more frequent local service for instance.
But how exactly should that be done? Right now we'd be trying to hit a moving target, and that's really risky and could backfire (see: Toronto, and other cities). For now, I still think sitting tight until we know more is the right choice.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

Shifting service is effectively a "cut" to some areas.

The urbanist in me wants to give up on the suburbs because we all know ridership recovery isn't going to be as significant as in other parts of the city. But altruistically that can't be done.. there are undoubtedly still people, maybe not as many, who still use connexion services, and some of those other frequent services that don't look like they're capturing as much ridership.

So long as there is a single person who uses any of those services even occasionally, reallocating that service would affect them, and in our current state that effect could be extremely detrimental to them, and future recovery of ridership.



Yes, we absolutely should make adjustments based on new travel patterns. I would suspect that in the future (and made easier with Stage 2) we will be gutting connexion services and implementing more frequent local service for instance.
But how exactly should that be done? We'd be trying to hit a moving target, and that's really risky and could backfire (see: Toronto, and other cities). For now, I still think sitting tight until we know more is the right choice.

I think it would be easy to say cut connexion routes and "give up on the suburbs". But it is the suburbs that need the most help in this reorganization. I would say that for every connexion route that is cut in Orleans (for example), there should be an increase to a local route in Orleans to help transit riders in Orleans go to/from the places they need to go (groceries, medical appointments, etc.).

I understand what you are saying, but there is also a danger in waiting too long to make service adjustments. If we don't allocate our spare service in ways that make sense, then we won't see ridership levels recover because no one will come back to a service that isn't serving their new needs.

[OCCheetos]

From the meeting, Manconi says they're working on it, but it won't be presented to the commission until June.

Even then, I'm not sure it would be the permanent solution (but maybe it is).

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

Shifting service is effectively a "cut" to some areas.

To a certain extent it is I suppose, but there are low density suburbs where there are buses coming every 7.5 minutes right now. That made sense pre-COVID but it doesn't make that much sense now.

15 minute service would be acceptable and it would allow the resources to be shifted to other places where they would be more useful and beneficial to more people.

[J.OT13]

I agree. I live in very suburban Orleans and rush-hour buses are every 12 minutes. Reducing service to 15 minutes would be sufficient until next Spring.

[rocketphish]

How OC rolls — full service, no layoffs, just near-empty buses
The city's buses, and everyone has noticed, look empty. This is not a fantasy.

Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Nov 25, 2020 • Last Updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read



If you sold widgets and, through no fault of your own, 75 per cent of sales disappeared overnight, what would you do?

Possibly the first thing, in the short term, is cut expenses, then catch your breath and figure out how to sell more widgets, either by cutting the price or designing a better widget. Control what you can control.

Not at OC Transpo. In our imperfect analogy, it has decided to charge more for its widget, a 2.5-per cent increase on Jan. 1, and not deal with its major expense, which is salaries. Not a single layoff this year.

The city’s buses, and everyone has noticed, look empty. This is not a fantasy. At the transit commission last week, we were told ridership in October was only 28 per cent of what might normally be expected. (And that figure is higher than some months since the pandemic struck in March.)

So, given that roughly three of four regular riders is not taking transit, would it not be wise to look at a modest reduction in service to help offset the decrease in revenue?

General manager John Manconi doesn’t see it that way. Neither, apparently does the commission, which approved the fare increase by a wide margin.

“No operators have been laid off as a result of decreased ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic,” came a written reply from Manconi.

“Introducing service cuts now would impact the livelihood and wellbeing of our vulnerable population and essential workers that depend on our service most. OC Transpo has tabled a financially responsible budget with an equitable lens to ensure no one is left stranded. We continue to play a vital role in our city’s ability to respond and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

I think the “vulnerable” and “essential workers” deserve more credit, being resilient enough to wait 10 minutes for a train or bus instead of five, or some variation thereof. It also seems contradictory to fight for the “livelihood and wellbeing” of your riders by charging them more money, but we’ll let Manconi have his say.

To the numbers for a moment. It will cost about $672 million to run the transit service in 2021. Of that, some $309 million is salaries and benefits, by far the single largest item. A fare freeze in 2020 cost the system about $5.1 million, or less than one per cent of the total budget. Really, it’s paper-clip money.

On to salaries. Driving a bus used to be regarded as a blue-collar job. Now it’s a shade of green. A check of the so-called Sunshine List for 2019 found more than 400 operators making more than $100,000 a year, a good deal of it, evidently, in overtime. (In 2015, by the way, the number was about a dozen.)

Are we to believe there isn’t a way to slightly cut down on overtime — just one example — to reduce the wage envelope so that a fare increase could be avoided? The fare increase, by the way, is the least of it. The transit levy on the property tax bill is to increase 4.6 per cent, this applied to people who will never take a bus all year.

I do appreciate that the widget-analogy is not the best one. OC Transpo is in business to provide a public service, not turn a profit and, realistically, is supposed to need subsidies to break even. The central question, surely, and it extends to the mayor and councillors, is whether “all systems go” is a financially responsible reaction to an economic calamity.

We read this week that 80 per cent of hotel workers in Ottawa-Gatineau are laid off. The restaurant industry is on its knees, some outlets never to recover. Airlines and tourism are crippled. Small retail has been battered.

And, somehow, it’s defensible to have the transit system operate at full capacity?

Obviously, it’s a hideous thing to lay off a worker in the middle of a pandemic. Maybe there’s been a collective decision in the public sector to keep people employed because the alternative is worse, no one is sure how long layoffs will last and there could be major complications with union and severance provisions.

Fine, then say that. But I don’t think the public will be swayed by arguments that we need a fully-charged transit system for 28 per cent of ridership. It’s crazy.

Instead, we beg another level of government for funds because, apparently, it just grows on trees. Ontario’s deficit? $38.5 billion. Canada’s? $343 billion.

Public money? The wheels on that bus go round and round and nobody, not our unborn grandchildren, ever gets off.

To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-291-6265 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ar-empty-buses

[J.OT13]

I support OC's choice not to layoff drivers. We did that prematurely before the Line 1 launch and that was a mistake. We had no idea how long the pandemic would last. A lot of the driver hours were OT before the pandemic, so now it may have balanced-out salary wise.

I also support the choice to maintain regular service, for essential workers, vulnerable populations and physical distancing.

That said, cutting rush-hour suburb-downtown routes even by 20-25% might be a good idea since most office workers now work from home. Running smaller buses instead of the Artics and DDs might also be a worth considering on certain routes.

The problem is that the City expects the Feds and Province to bail them out. The Feds and Province should have placed some conditions like cutting down on rush-hour routes and running smaller buses. If you expect a bail-out, why would you adjust your business mode.