this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Pellerin: Public transit is a public service. Treat it that way (ottawacitizen.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know what matters a lot more than balancing budgets? Defining public transit as a true public service and making sure the people who depend on it the most, those who have few other options to get to where they need to be, have transit available to them when they need it at a cost they can afford.

This is the problem. Public transit is seen as a service used by poor people. In Europe public transit is used by everyone because it is the best, fastest option to get to where you are going. When I travel to London I take the train from the airport to Victoria station them walk to my hotel. Everywhere else I go is by tube or by train. I have never rented a car and only hired a van when I had a group of people and a bunch of luggage to move a long distance.

If public transit worked (Ottawa LRT anyone?) and we stopped making traveling by car convenient, people would use public transit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The new train in Ottawa was built to be rebuilt.

The guy who built it - apparently fired from Translink/BC and failing upward - built warm weather trains for ottawa; that's only useful for like 4-5 months of the year. The rest of the time, though, the power shoes - which aren't inverted and can't get through the snowpack - start failing and I guess the trains brown out.

The platforms, built without a better idea in mind - Edmonton is a place, guys! - are also warm-weather platforms. Comparing Tunney's Pasture with Sapperton or VCC shows how one influenced the other. They're designed like Vancouver stations, they look like Vancouver stations, and I'm gonna need convincing they didn't source from the same suppliers or use leftovers from Vancouver stations.

But SNC-Lavalin - or whether they skilly rebranded to because no normies will remember - delivered on time for their bonus.

Now it leverages a Sunk Cost fallacy to actually become stations that work. We can't toss them out, but they're going to require a huge investment to retro-fit them for modern Capitol weather.

But this train is also 1/4 built. It needs to get down to baseline, run past hazelden, and turn up TerryFox for Centrum and the tech park. This bullshit of running near the river makes half of it useless as fish don't take transit and do don't need to be in the direct catchment for a station. Where the hell is barrhaven's representation and a link to Fallowfield or a similar station on the way to the airport? Where's the connection to any other mode of travel, for that matter?

They have a lot of building to do, and not a little bit of 'splaining.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Looking at this picture from wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCC%E2%80%93Clark_station#/media/File%3AVCC-Clark_Station_Platform.jpg

I absolutely agree with your statement.

From this wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCC%E2%80%93Clark_station

Who is the guy you're talking about?