councillors vote to explore expanded transit for rural ottawa
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the transit portion of city of ottawa taxes varies in different areas of the city.
tony caldwell
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postmedia
city councillors have voted in favour of exploring expanded transit for rural ottawa, but they didn’t support reporting back on the idea of engaging private companies to do the job.
the question of expanding rural service to improve transit between rural villages and major hubs such as oc transpo transit stations and workplaces was in front of city council on wednesday.
on april 2, all four of the rural councillors present at the agricultural and rural affairs committee voted in favour of asking the city to evaluate expanding transit options into rural wards, including contracting out the service to private companies.
on wednesday, there was enough support from council to analyze ways to expand transit to rural areas, but not for evaluating the feasibility of working with private transportation providers.
capital ward coun. shawn menard argued it would be difficult to make private transit work.
“usually it results in in higher fees, obviously less jobs within oc transpo. furthermore, usually the costs are high for individuals who want to take the bus or take the service,” he said.
“this isn’t about cutting jobs. it’s not about cutting a service that exists today. it looks at filling a gap that exists,” rideau-jock coun. david brown said.
the transit needs of one village in rural ottawa could be different from the needs of another, coun. david brown says.
julie oliver
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postmedia
rural councillors aren’t asking that the urban transit area be expanded — that wouldn’t be feasible or make financial sense — but rather to have an open conversation about transit services for rural areas, brown said.
“we’re looking for a suite of options. the needs of one village could be different from the needs of the other. so this is about more options on the table, not less,” brown said.
as it stands, transit tax is collected in ottawa’s urban area to pay for the operating and capital costs of providing transit service there.
in transit area a, the first ring around the urban area, property taxes pay for the cost of providing transit services from rural villages into ottawa as well as for para transpo and weekly shoppers’ transit service. further from the urban core in transit area b, taxes pay for the capital and operating costs of the para transpo service plus weekly shopper services.
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to complicate matters more, if a transit service starts and ends in ottawa, it’s under municipal jurisdiction. under the city’s transit bylaw, companies can apply for permission to operate if they offer an airport service, a sightseeing service or an employee or customer shuttle service.
if a service starts outside ottawa boundaries, but ends in ottawa, it’s under provincial jurisdiction. there are already examples of transit services that start in towns outside ottawa, but end in the city. in the toronto area, transit users often use a combination of go transit, a provincial service, and the ttc municipal service.
one size doesn’t fit all in rural wards, osgoode coun. isabelle skalski said.
“i think we owe it to ourselves to explore what private companies could offer to complement the service that we have here in the city,” she said.
there are few canadian municipalities with significant rural territory to cover with public transit, said pat scrimgeour, the city of ottawa’s director of transit customer systems and planning. examples of those that do include hamilton, durham and york. in most of those cases the same tax rate is applied across the entire territory.
“there’s more political imperative and more funding available to provide more service,” scrimgeour said.
“for us to have public transit all over our vast city of 2,800 square kilometres is a big challenge,” mayor mark sutcliffe said.
“having said that, can we provide better solutions for rural residents? i hope we can and i think we should strive to. they’ve asked for things like shuttle buses and buses that run maybe once or twice a day, express buses and other options like that. they’ve asked us to be innovative about it.”
wednesday’s vote doesn’t mean that private transit companies are off the table, brown said.
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last july, as part of the development of the transportation master plan part 2, city staff were asked to report back on “opportunities to further leverage private and not-for-profit transportation service providers — alongside city-operated transit services — with the specific goal of increasing transit mode share across ottawa, including rural areas.”
that report has not yet been presented to city council.
just because staff were not asked to look at a particular option doesn’t mean it can’t be considered, sutcliffe told reporters.
“everything is on the table in terms of what we might do to support our rural residents in the future,” he said.
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