OC Transpo

[Richard Eade]

And, of course, it is true. Anyone taking over OC Transpo at this point has the advantage of what has been set into motion by previous General Managers. Manconi (mostly) repaired the employee discontent, and created a very lean organization. Amilcar pointed out to Councilors just how bad a situation their continual underfunding of OC Transpo has created; revealing the underlying ‘structural’ issues with the financing.

Overall, I don’t have enough information to know whether Ms. Amilcar was a ‘good’ manager, but even her leaving after a relatively short tenure should have been a signal to Councilors that the status quo of continual cuts had built a ‘house of cards’ that was coming crashing down.

While a different manager MIGHT have been able to weather the storm better than Ms. Amilcar, when she arrived, there were a lot of factors stacked against her. The bus fleet had a large number of very old buses, with many that were at, or even past, their useful life; City Council had limited all new bus purchases to e-buses only; e-bus production was running years behind schedule, meaning long delays for deliveries; emergency funding from the Province was dwindling to nothing; and the City’s financial support was being reduced every year, even though costs were rising fast, in a time of high inflation. It was Ms. Amilcar that got the flack for those issues.

I think that, as interim General Manager, Mr. Charter did a reasonably good job of being the ‘Whipping Post’. He was honest about what was happening, and proposed realistic solutions to help reduce the harm – like removing 255 runs from the bus schedule. It was also Mr. Charter who, out of an abundance of caution, took almost all of the Line 1 vehicles off the tracks.

Now that the e-buses are being received at a reasonable pace, the oldest, least reliable, buses are being taken out of service. The axles on the Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs) are being swapped out, with the prediction of full service returning by about mid-June. The opening of the eastern extension of the Confederation Line is hoped to be soon after that, as more LRVs become available to test it. There is even talk of having redesigned axles for the LRVs – in several years.

All-in-all, past issues do seem to be clearing up for OC Transpo. It is a good time to be coming in as the General Manager. Let’s hope that Mr. Leary can keep the momentum going by conquering that last big hurdle – prying open the vault at City Hall, and getting proper funding for transit.