Ottawa Business Journal
Published: Monday, January 19, 2009

Transit issue will inevitable define our city

Regardless of how the OC Transpo strike ends – whether through a negotiated settlement or federal back-to-work legislation – it is likely that the issue of transit will be pivotal in the 2010 municipal election.

New candidates for council seats and the mayor's chair will easily blame city hall's incumbents for hundreds of millions of dollars in economic loss, social disruption and a poisoned local labour environment for the foreseeable future. But this posturing can't be sustained through a 10-month mayoral contest or a hotly contested four-to-six-month ward battle. The soundbites will grow stale and weary; voters will simply tune out.

What should resonate and could carry some to victory, however, is an informed debate about the future governance, structure, operations and potential ownership of OC Transpo.

To start, we need to change the governance model of OC Transpo. Most major cities in North American run their transit systems as separate, or at least, arm's-length, companies. By doing so they retain control over policy but discard the politics. Debates over route choices, human resources and customer service are left to managers, as opposed to politicians.

Such a transition could then effectively address broader questions of structure and operations. In Orleans, where I live, it is glaringly obvious that we need to increase the frequency of rush hour routes on the 20- and 30-series bus routes. Anecdotal evidence from friends suggests the same holds true for Barrhaven and Kanata.

An arm's-length commission would also be better positioned to make tough choices on the future of non-peak and rural routes that simply are not viable. Innovative solutions with smaller buses or more personalized taxi services could cost-effectively supplant many empty buses running during the evening.

And for the very brave amongst them, candidates for mayor and council should at least broach the issue of partial or full transit privatization.

Privatization could take many forms, from competitive tendering of various route choices to better-sourcing office and maintenance functions. And this isn't about union busting, as local organized labour advocates will surely charge. Successor rights prevail under labour law whether the city or ABC bus lines is in charge.

But cities such as Las Vegas, Denver, Boston, and San Francisco, along with those in Europe and Asia, have contracted out parts of their systems and realized, according to dozens of studies, significant savings and service improvements.

To be fair to the critics, yes, some savings come from lower labour costs, more flexible scheduling and various route choices. But we need to have this debate.

According to the Wendell Cox transportation consultancy, a mass transit and urban demography firm, almost 90 per cent of 40 major centres have witnessed public transport market share declines since 1980. Effectively, Ottawa's transit ridership on a per capita and market share basis has remained stagnant, according to Mr. Cox.

And with many commuters discovering that carpooling, staggered hours and creative scheduling works, there's no doubt OC Transpo will suffer a marked and sustained ridership decline thanks to this strike.

Metropolitan mass transit systems in the 21st century are crucial to the wide income strata of the populations they serve. They also should meet societal objectives with respect to urban planning and the environment – but as taxpayers, we have to ask what appropriate levels of subsidies are: 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 70 per cent, or more?

From my vantage point, a transit system two-thirds rider-financed and one-third subsidized would be ideal, regardless of ownership and service structure. But international experience has shown more often than not (yes, there are some failures – in South America, most notably) that to move to this, privatization (selected, partial or full) is the proven route to follow.

Labour disruptions are also much rarer in privatized systems.

Those that cower and shy away from this discussion of our transit future in 2010 will effectively forfeit their chance to hold office. For a better transit future, this is the way forward.

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Walter Robinson is a principal with Tactix Government Consulting. He is a former federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a former chief of staff to the mayor of Ottawa.