Downtown can't take more buses: Friends of O-Train(Wednesday, November 28, 2007 by Geoff Nixon, The Ottawa Citizen) -- A plan by the city to spend $1.27 billion on bus-related transit over the next three years is counterproductive, says a light-rail advocacy group, because the bus system is at capacity and cannot be improved by putting more buses on the road. Klaus Beltzner, spokesman for Friends of the O-Train, said in an interview yesterday that the city is looking for authorization to spend $1.27 billion on bus transit between 2008 and 2010 -- which will go mostly to patching holes in the existing transitway. The group came to its $1.27-billion figure by adding up the city's estimated expenses for 2008-2010 as listed in city documents, he said. "We can't get more people downtown with the model that they are using," Mr. Beltzner said yesterday. "It doesn't matter how many more buses they buy, or how much more transitway they build, none of that stuff will work." Further investment in the transitway is a flawed strategy for improving service, Mr. Beltzner said, because the city identified in 2004 that the system could handle a maximum 175 buses along its Albert-Slater transit corridor. And because the system is at capacity, he said, it is not growing its ridership at a rate that it otherwise could. The solution, according to the Friends of the O-Train, is to invest in light-rail transit: Trains take the same number of drivers to operate, but carry many more people per ride, Mr. Beltzner said. And if the city keeps extending the transitway, they will only have to spend more money to renovate it for light-rail use in the future, he said. "You have to convert the transitway to rail, which means you have to lift up all the concrete and all the pavement and put ties and rails in there," Mr. Beltzner said. "So why bother putting concrete and pavement down when you have to rip it up?" © The Ottawa Citizen 2007 |