Ottawa, snow and public transportation

We recently received an enormous amount of snow in Ottawa, twenty inches in a day-and-a-half. It has not snowed this much since the 1970s, apparently. This recent weekend storm broke the all-time record for snowfall in Ottawa and our forecasters predict more storms before the end of the month. Last year the city council budgeted around 67 million dollars for snow removal and spent a few million more. Inexplicably, they budgeted only 65 million this year and have predictably already exhausted those funds (we can thank our miserable right-wing mayor, for whom no one actually admits voting). Subsequently many side streets remain unplowed but for the efforts of the people who live on them, and it has become awfully difficult to walk just about anywhere.

The awful, mismanaged public transportation system in Ottawa amplifies its pedestrian ’suck factor’ — city counselors have threatened to take over OC Transpo unless its administrators get their act together. One can stand on the corner waiting for a bus scheduled to arrive in fifteen minutes for thirty, forty, or fifty without luck. Fiona and I have actually waited for an hour and fifteen minutes for a bus once when she needed to get back home to her apartment; we currently both live next to arguably the worst bus route of them all–the number two–which stretches from one side of the city to the other. Consequently, we don’t even look at bus schedules anymore as there’s no telling when one will arrive. The only thing you do know for certain on the number two is that it will be crowded.

During the summer the problem solves itself. Ottawa is a small enough city that I can walk anywhere without difficulty or concern for my safety. However during the winter, especially when the city doesn’t apportion enough money to plow sidewalks, walking isn’t always an option. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression; I like living in Ottawa and have no immediate plans to leave (hard, I know). I simply wish to throttle the man who runs our public transportation system, and to adapt the immortal words of Weird Al Yankovic, rip his heart right out of his ribcage with my bare hands and throw it on the floor and stomp on it until he dies.