Weekly newsletter: May 16, 2023

Saskatoon at dusk

Earlier in the year, I was invited to join the Canadian Urban Transit Association’s (CUTA) Transit Board Members Committee (TBMC). The TBMC is comprised of people— mostly elected officials — who sit on transit committees, commissions, or their local equivalents across the country.

Along with the board invitation, I was also invited to attend CUTA’s spring summit and annual general meeting in Saskatoon, which took place last week. The TBMC meeting was a chance to gain more first-hand knowledge about transit performance across the country, challenges, and upcoming projects.

Devastatingly, there are many transit agencies across the country who have met or surpassed their pre-pandemic ridership, though they were all small-to-medium-sized systems in cities with a heavy industrial workforce.

Across the country, there are several exciting transit projects like Montréal’s RER and Calgary’s Green Line LRT. Montréal’s is approaching completion and Calgary’s is under construction. Both projects will bring rapid transit to areas currently underserved and aim to significantly improve connectivity between communities.

Interestingly (and embarrassingly) both projects have used our LRT and the public inquiry report as an example of what not to do.

Edmonton recently completely redesigned their bus network and introduced on-demand to some areas of their system. Not only has ridership increased, but their on-demand service — currently Canada’s largest — has increased ridership in the communities it serves by nearly 50 per cent. Hopefully, we can achieve similar results with the initiatives as part of our ongoing route review (which you can participate in here).

While on a tour of Saskatoon Transit’s garage, I came across these former OC Transpo buses! Saskatoon
purchased them from us in 2012 to test out articulated buses. These are now retired.

The theme of the larger CUTA summit was how transit and housing are complementary items when it comes to building livable cities for everyone.

Traditionally, transit has been brought to new communities after its construction, but with changing policies and positions across the country, it’s time to bring housing to transit instead; basically a chicken and egg problem.

Through improved zoning and land use around major transit hubs, we can build sustainable communities where people can rely less on their cars, which is better for our built environment as well as our natural environment.

Forthcoming initiatives like the Permanent Transit Fund, which CUTA hopes to expand to include land acquisition around transit stations, will help improve the state of public transit across the country, including here in Ottawa.

There are opportunities for this in our own community, like the land at Nepean Woods and Fallowfield park and rides, which are currently well-underused. These are chances to build vibrant communities to replace the seas of asphalt.

Other than housing, the CUTA summit included speakers from the transit and transit-related industries on topics like improving accessibility, new transit technologies, sustainability, measuring success, and equity/truth and reconciliation.

I’m very grateful to have been invited to sit on the TBMC as our city’s representative at CUTA and enjoyed the opportunity to attend the summit in Saskatoon.

Now for some fun, let me tell you about my adventure to get to Saskatoon. The flight I booked there included a 34-minute connection through Winnipeg. That itinerary being offered by the airline, I assumed minor delays would not be an issue.

I was so wrong.

My flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg departed 32 minutes late. Although we made up some time and landed in Winnipeg 20 minutes late, I still was unable to make the gate closing time for my connecting flight to Saskatoon. As that was the last flight from Winnipeg to Saskatoon for the day, I was staring down an overnight stay at YWG.

Thankfully, there was a flight from Winnipeg to Calgary that was delayed by two hours which would connect to the last flight from Calgary to Saskatoon, so the airline rebooked me onto that connecting flight.

Ten hours and three cities in three provinces later I made it to Saskatoon. I guess I learned my lesson with tight connections, but honestly, I know I’ll probably book something similar if it was offered in the future.

Take care, and we’ll chat next week!