It's not over when it's over: Why damage from a long transit strike lingers for years

Even after the buses start rolling again, the city will have a lot of work to get the system back on track. Mohammed Adam reports.

(January 12, 2009 by Mohammed Adam, The Ottawa Citizen) -- In 2001, after a four-month transit strike, Vancouver bounced back from a year-long ridership loss to record a 12-per-cent increase by 2003.
Photograph by: Don Bill Keay, Canwest News Service, The Ottawa CitizenThe four-week transit strike that has convulsed the nation's capital could set Ottawa's public transit back years, history and other cities' experiences show.

Transit strikes invariably lead to a loss of riders, but experts say work stoppages that last four weeks or more have such a corrosive effect that damage to the system could last years.

As a federal mediator plans to sit down for separate meetings with officials from the city and the Amalgamated Transit Union today -- the 34th day of a labour stoppage -- a tipping point may have been passed.

Some of the frustrated commuters who have found other ways to deal with the strike will never go back to transit. Psychologically, they will tune out OC Transpo as a way of getting around. For a city government that wants people to choose transit over their own vehicles, that would be very bad news.

It could put at risk the city's $4.7-billion transit plan, an ambitious project to expand the Transitway and build a network of rail lines inside the Greenbelt over the next 30 years. The city needs billions in federal and provincial funding for major works like a downtown train tunnel, and both governments will want evidence that enough people would patronize the system to justify the huge investment.

Given that requirement, former transit commission chairman Al Loney says the last thing the city needs is to alienate riders or cause them to question the value of public transit.

The problem is not that the federal and provincial governments would deny funding because of the strike itself, he says. It is that the strike gives critics more ammunition to aim at a project about which many people still harbour serious doubts.

"Whenever you have a work stoppage of any sort, it hurts ridership and it hurts the system. And the longer it lasts, the more likely people will make other choices, and some of those will abandon the service forever," says Mr. Loney, also a former regional councillor for Nepean.

"Strikes create an awful lot of negative influence and if you are looking to introduce new services, spend megabucks to build a tunnel and everything, you don't want people mad at the transit company. You don't want people asking, 'Is this investment wise use of heavy capital dollars?' "

The backlash may already be brewing.

Tim Lane, a longtime member of the pro-transit Transport 2000 lobby group and Friends of the O-Train, says he is so disgusted by the way the two sides have handled the strike he is planning to cut back on his transit use. He is particularly dismayed that at a meeting last week, city council wouldn't support declaring transit an essential service.

"I used to buy a yearly bus pass but I am not going to do so anymore," he says. "I don't want to drive my car so I am going to buy tickets for the time I need ... I'm meeting (senior provincial cabinet minister) Jim Watson and I am going to tell him, 'No money for public transit.' If the city doesn't think it is an essential service, why should they get money for it?"

If Ottawa has any doubts about the problems ahead, it needs to look no farther than its own backyard for the evidence.

In 1996, the year transit workers went on a 24-day strike, OC Transpo carried six million fewer passengers and made $5 million less than the year before. The work stoppage was the main reason. The company carried 65 million riders in 1996, down 9.7 per cent from the year before. The strike contributed to the company's deficit in 1996.

In January 1997, the first full month of service after the strike, OC Transpo carried 6.8 million riders, about the same as January 1996. But company officials acknowledged that this may have been the result of a massive marketing campaign, backed by fare discounts, to woo back disaffected riders. The promotional campaign, on buses, billboards and the airwaves, included four days of free fares after the strikers resumed work on Dec. 19, 1996. Riders were also offered discounted fares for the rest of December and discounted passes for January.

In February 1997, when full fares resumed, ridership tumbled four per cent. In March, it fell 2.3 per cent. Other promotional activities, including an extension of Transitway service and a flat fare any time of the day, continued for the rest of the year.

Ottawa is not alone in shedding riders during a protracted strike. Across North America, cities large and small have suffered similar fates, even though they varied in their ability to recover from long strikes.

After a six-week transit strike in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1977, ridership went down an average 12 per cent on regular routes, while express buses lost about 15 per cent of riders. Similarly in 1981, a six-week strike in Orange County in southern California caused a 20-per-cent drop in ridership that took years to make up.

Mayor Larry O'Brien has said that because of the strike, Ottawa's public transit will likely take years to recover, and Councillor Alex Cullen, chairman of city council's transit committee, agrees. He says the strike by 2,300 drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and others, will leave a "troublesome" legacy. Mr. Cullen laments the fact that OC Transpo was enjoying some of its best ridership numbers when the strike occurred.

"Given our last experience and the experiences of other jurisdictions, we can expect that ridership will drop once the buses start running," he says. "It may take a year to win back riders, but there will be damage and it will take a while to get back on track."

He says students and people with low incomes will return to their buses because they simply have no other choice. But the city's challenge will be to get back people who have alternatives but chose to ride the bus.

"It will take some considerable effort by OC Transpo and city council to win back those riders. It may be that in the spring, the buses will not be packed and it may also be that within a year, we will find ourselves reaching record levels again," Mr. Cullen says.

Cities like Vancouver and New York have shown that it can be done, though both cities are much different from Ottawa.

In 2001, after a four-month transit strike that remains the longest ever in North America, Vancouver bounced back from a year-long ridership loss to record a 12-per-cent increase by 2003. But Vancouver opened a brand new transit line and invested in community shuttle service improvements.

Despite a disruptive three-day Christmas strike in New York in 2005, ridership numbers there defied public anger to hit the highest levels in 35 years that year. New York, however, is a special case. A much larger and denser city than Ottawa, it is highly dependent on transit, and most people have no choice but to ride the subway or bus. As well, the transit authorities cut fares as part of a promotional package.

Whether Ottawa is a Knoxville or a Vancouver remains to be seen.

Mr. Cullen, however, sees no reason why, with the proper policies and incentives, Ottawa's public transit cannot rebound.

"I don't think there will be permanent damage, but how soon we recover will depend on what kind of promotion OC Transpo puts in place," he says.

Councillor Gord Hunter agrees.

"There is no question that rider confidence in the system is shaken and we will have to work at it to get the riders back and restore confidence in the system," he says. "It can't be any gloomier than it is now, but the future looks good. It is a growing system, not a declining system."

Mr. Hunter and Mr. Cullen believe the strike will have no lasting effect on the city's multibillion-dollar transit blueprint. If the plan were being implemented in the next three to five years, there would be reason for concern. But with the first phase of the 30-year plan expected to take a decade, a lot could change in the intervening years.

For one, Mr. Hunter says, the end of the strike will usher in a long period of labour peace that will allow the transit plan to blossom. He points out that after the last strike, there were more than 10 years of peace.

"After the last strike, the bus service got bigger and better and I expect the same thing to happen," he says.

According to Mr. Cullen, the city's main advantage is that Ottawa will continue to grow and that will fuel demand for public transit. Oil prices could shoot up again and dampen the enthusiasm for driving, and traffic congestion could become so intolerable people demand transit expansion.

Besides, he says, the federal and provincial governments are not themselves immune to strikes and their damaging impact, and therefore will not punish the city for the Amalgamated Transit Union's walkout. And with the governments gearing up to spend billions of dollars to pull Canada out of a recession, public transit remains a good investment, strike or not.

"Our plan for rapid transit is a 30-year project and an unfortunate blip like the strike is just that -- a blip," he says.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

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