Viewpoint: Prioritizing transit must come before raising parking rates

By Rosa Saba

An activist with Ottawa’s Healthy Transportation Coalition is arguing that the city should be raising street parking rates and freezing public transit rates, instead of the other way around. The HTC is a group of citizens, businesses and organizations that aim to influence Ottawa’s transportation policies, especially regarding accessibility and environmental issues.

Trevor Haché wants councillors to show they support the use of public transit by making riding the bus more affordable than parking downtown.

It currently costs $3 an hour to park on the street downtown. A round-trip on the bus would cost around $7, which means that for two or more people, it’s often cheaper to drive downtown than take public transit. Haché wants this to be changed, so that it’s always cheaper to take the bus than to drive. He noted that the price of an adult monthly bus pass has risen by $32 in the past decade, while street parking costs have remained the same.

On the surface, this sounds like a worthwhile initiative. Parking downtown is tough, and more bus riders means reduced toxic engine emissions. The idea of a healthier, less congested downtown core isn’t something anyone can logically be against.

But there a few things that would have to change in order for this to work.
If more people started taking the bus downtown, OC Transpo would be even more overwhelmed than it already is. The new LRT system will alleviate this somewhat, but only for traffic coming from certain areas.

The city’s transit agency currently seems to have more passengers than it can deal with, at least during rush hour. And OC Transpo is doing nothing to make things any easier for riders.

Take the No. 4 bus route, which runs back and forth between the Rideau Centre and Carleton University. For some reason, at peak hours, it always seems to be a short bus that’s already at full capacity, which means it drives past stops all the time, leaving frustrated students late for class. The same could be said for the No. 7, which often ends up packed past the yellow safety line at the front of the bus.

There are also many bus routes that simply don’t run often enough, or late enough. The No. 87 between Baseline and Greenboro stations is one example. On the weekends, it would leave riders stranded if they wanted to stay out late downtown. For many people coming from Nepean or further, taking the bus just wouldn’t be a viable option unless you live very close to the No. 97’s route.

Ottawa’s current parking strategy is aimed at keeping parking costs low to support downtown small businesses. This is not to say that prioritizing public transit over parking would hurt those businesses. But before the city can change the current parking pricing structures, city officials would need to have a transit system in place that can handle this influx of people – at every time of day.