It is 4:00 p.m. and the workday is ending for many, which means it’s time to head home. CTV News Ottawa is continuing our return-to-office commute stress test, this time heading from downtown to Barrhaven Marketplace station. Peter Szperling is taking the car, while I’m taking the LRT to Tunney’s Pasture before transferring to a bus. We put both options to the test to see which gets us there faster. Peter’s GPS clocks the drive at 53 minutes. Mine is a little longer, but not by much. And if OC Transpo runs like this, avoiding the cost of parking, fuel and vehicle maintenance, and wear and tear, could save big bucks. From Rideau station, a 15-minute LRT ride gets me to Tunney’s Pasture, where I have multiple bus options into Barrhaven. While many west-end riders report delays and cancellations, there are nearly a dozen routes serving the community. I board the route 75 bus. “It’s usually pretty crowded,” says Jenny Lee, who takes this bus often. “But this one comes every 15, 20 minutes that I find, ever since last year at least, so it’s not that bad.” But Lee doesn’t live in Barrhaven. At Tunney’s, she was waiting for the route 82 bus, a local route inside the Greenbelt. “When I’m coming home, it never shows up to Tunney’s Pasture on time,” she says. “I waited 50 minutes before I gave up and took the 75. I think if OC Transpo was to improve anything, for me, definitely the buses specifically. Give more buses, maybe have the buses come more often.” Meanwhile, Peter has made it to Marketplace and describes the traffic as “lighter than usual.” His total trip time, 54 minutes. Ten minutes later, my bus arrives, right on time. A little over an hour; 64 minutes. It wasn’t bad. I was talking to one individual on the bus, who says it was one of the emptiest trips he’s ever had. This was a good day for transit. While commuters can accept the odd hiccup, days like this need to be the baseline. For Lee, the issue is bigger than one missed bus. “When the entire neighbourhood is relying on that one bus and if it doesn’t show up, it screws a lot of people over.” Last week, I took the same return-to-office stress test from Marketplace to downtown. That trip took 60 minutes during the morning rush hour commute.
