Pellerin: OC Transpo’s bus changes will frustrate you even more

Commuters on OC Transpo will face major, complicated bus route changes at the end of the month. Photo by Julie Oliver /POSTMEDIAArticle content

In the latest instalment of “What Fresh Hell is This?” I bring you changes to your bus routes and schedules that will totally make you late regardless of where you’re going. And you thought only snow in late April could make you mad enough to burn shovels and spit nails.

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For reasons allegedly known to itself, OC Transpo decided to toss the whole system up in the air and change everything you knew and thought you could trust. Haha, joke’s on you. Starting April 27, in addition to making sure you’re at your stop early in case the bus is too (only to have to wait 10 minutes because contrary to what the GPS says, the darn thing is late again), you’ll have to try to remember that yes, yours is among the 100 or so routes that were changed.

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Good luck.

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At this juncture, you have two choices: Quit your job since there’s no way you’ll ever get there, or trust in the Gods of Ottawa Transit by plunging into the bowels of the website to figure out where and when to catch what. Nowhere in this scenario will you have time to memorize what the transit authority’s vision is, so I’ll tell you. It’s “Proud to be your choice to get there.”

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(You may take five minutes to go yell something family-unfriendly into a paper bag. I’ll wait.)

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I thought, as a public-minded columnist, that I should add a screenshot from the OC Transpo website to help you find your way to the information you need, but after experimenting with it for several extremely long minutes for which I shall now claim disability benefits, I decided against it. Too cruel. I’m not even convinced I should point you to the “information” page telling riders how to figure out the fun and hilarious ways the barely announced changes are making their lives miserable.

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If I weren’t afraid of losing you forever, I’d send you to the OC Transpo communications department with a mission to find out what a student who lives near Greenbank and Fallowfield roads and has to be at Carleton University for 11:30 a.m. would need to do to avoid waiting so long on a henceforth-unserved street corner as to become mummified.

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I’m not done.

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If the only problem were the need for most transit users to learn new ways to enjoy the bus (yes, you may fetch that paper bag again), that’d be one thing. But as guests on Neil Saravanamuttoo’s invaluable Better Ottawa podcast discussed a few days ago, there is much worse.

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First is the number of buses available relative to how many are needed on any given day to provide the service. The need is 540 vehicles. We have 519, thanks to a long maintenance backlog and insufficient workforce to address it. You don’t have to be a math genius to know this doesn’t add up.