It is 4 p.m. and we are heading out for the final installment of our return-to-office commute stress test. This time, we are travelling from the ByWard Market to McCurdy Road in Kanata, near Hazeldean. CTV’s Peter Szperling is driving, while I am taking OC Transpo. Peter’s GPS estimates his trip at 53 minutes, avoiding the highway. My route starts with the LRT from the ByWard Market to Tunney’s Pasture, where I need to transfer to route 60. There appears to be plenty of buses heading west from Tunney’s Pasture, but only one will take me to the street I need. And that is where the familiar transit frustration begins. Route 60 is delayed by about 20 minutes, as hundreds of commuters crowd the station waiting for buses. A bus eventually arrives, but now only a few minutes behind schedule. It is an articulated bus, but only about half a dozen people board. The trip is otherwise uneventful, and I am not stuck waiting any longer. Peter arrives in Kanata after nearly an hour behind the wheel. Roughly 20 minutes later, I arrive. My total travel time is about 1 hour and 15 minutes. It is a similar result to last week’s reverse commute, when the trip from McCurdy Road to downtown took 68 minutes. Over the past two weeks, our commute tests have shown that transit can get you where you need to go, but reliability remains a key issue, particularly when a bus connection is delayed. For many commuters, the question is not whether transit works on a good day. It is whether it works reliably every day.
