Are you coming to Ottawa?

The Ottawa bus system is usually pretty good, but I’ve run afoul of it a few times. To use a CS example: it’s like a handy program that crashes on occasion. It’s great when it’s working properly, but then it goes down in flames when you really need it.

My morning basically works like this. I try to catch the bus at 8:21. If it is on time, I get to my transfer point early and catch the bus there at 8:46, which gets me to the office at 9:10. That’s my basic plan, and it works most mornings. My second bus is pretty reliable because it starts from the station where I catch it.

Sometimes the 8:21 bus is early. If it’s early and I catch it, I get to the transfer point early and get the bus there at 8:31 and get to work early. This happens maybe once a week. If my first bus is early enough that I miss it, which also happens about once a week, the fun begins.

The next bus after the 8:21 is scheduled for 8:32. If it is on time or early, I make it to the transfer point in time to hop on the 8:46 connection, and away I go. However, if it is more than 3 or 4 minutes late, I miss the 8:46 connection. After 8:46, the bus to my office switches to running every half hour, and I have a lot of waiting around to do.

There have been times when the 8:21 bus has been 5-10 minutes early and I’ve missed it, and then the 8:32 bus has been 15 minutes late, which makes for half an hour of standing around in the cold wondering where my bus that is supposed to come every 10 minutes is. On a couple of occasions, they even cancelled the 8:21 bus without telling anyone. This from the email response I got back after I wrote them to complain:

“Regrettably, on September 19th, the 08:21 trip was altogether cancelled due to a lack of resources.  Consequently, the subsequent scheduled trip experienced crowded conditions; the 08:32 run was, as a result, delayed due to the extra passenger load. ”

Ouch.

I will admit I could probably eliminate the worst case scenario by dragging my butt out of bed a bit earlier, but I already have 1 backup plan. I don’t see why I should have to get out there 3 buses ahead of when I really need to. In a perfect world, I’d just catch the 8:32 every day and shave 10 minutes off my commute…

Also, my office is out in the middle of nowhere so I have fewer options than I would if I were going downtown, for example. So my experience may be a bit worse than average.

With the obvious exception of the strike, I had only heard people speak very highly of the bus system. Is it buses not waiting for transfers that results in such wide differences? Are the closest routes to your endpoints low-frequency?