Strollers on buses: ummm, little common sense, here...?

On the big issues, City Council often tweaks. And tweaks. Lansdowne Park redevelopment must not be a big issue, because the Mayor tossed that one to a few business guys he happens to like, opening neither his eyes nor a public tender process.

Strollers on buses? Woohoo! All over that one! The issue looms as large as some of the strollers.

There are plenty of views on this. Fourth Dwarf took a shot in this very blog.* Some stroller partisans seem to suspect an all-out attack on the sanctity of motherhood. Some bus passengers seem to desire no less than a clear cannonshot down the bus' centre aisle without hitting anything. Except maybe that sketchy-looking kid with the iPod, sitting dead center, back row. And city council is lovin' this one, because it's just the kind micromanagement issue from which they can suck all common sense. Nature abhors a vacuum. Ottawa City Council routinely creates 'em to operate in. Draw your own conclusion. I'm just sayin'...

One issue is that while city buses have, like most things North American, gained girth over the years, they have not kept anything resembling parity with the bigger baby buggy builders. (Say that three times, fast...) Humungostrollers are fashionable, ubiquitous, and hard to find alternatives for.

I see sound reasons for their big-ass bicycle tires. In Ottawa in winter, horsing the abysmally tiny wheels of old-style foldable strollers through ice ruts and snowdrifts can quickly bust up the stroller, the person pushing it, and/or the baby on board. (We shall not discuss those damn triangular yellow signs in SUV windows just now. I digress.) And I am totally down with the fact that lotsa moms who can afford one stroller only will buy the one that pushes most easily.

However, there can be a sense of entitlement around motherhood. (Kaffee-klatsching yummy mommies who circle their children's SUV-proxies like covered wagons around their tables at the Glebe Bridgehead, such that even a shifty li'l coffee-jonesing coyote can't slip past without fatal entanglement: I'm lookin' at you...!) There can also be a sense of entitlement among civilian bus commuters who want to get down the aisle without the clothed equivalent of pole-dancing, and who look askance at rows of front jump seats folded up for one or two lower-mobility passengers when they'd like to be sitting in 'em.

Bottom line, though, is that it's public transit. Ya share it. Bus users who buy strollers need to take that, and a tape measure, into account, and two-legged commuters need to understand that it's a bus. Sometimes it gets crowded, but it's good for your wallet and the environment, and sharing it with everybody who needs it makes it that much better for both. And how important is it to always get your own way, really?

What I'm advocating is a little common sense. And a modicum of the courtesy that used to be called "common", before it became uncommon.

And it would be really good if you didn't kick that shifty li'l coffee-jonesing coyote hiding under the seat in front of you. In exchange, he won't bite you. And may not eat your cat. See how easy courtesy can be?

* UPDATE: see Zoom's simultaneous post on the issue, here

The Best Group Blog? It's not us

Best group blog? Please, we're not even close. For my money it's the gang over at the OC Transpo Community Livejournal. How can we compete with posts like this?

driver of bus #5040. #7 ST Laurent @ 4:10pm
What is up with your driving! I am typing this as I am sitting in your bus on my Blackberry. This is a Hybryde bus and you are driving like it was a standard and you are poping the clutch! Everyone is having a hard time staying in their seats let alone stand in the bus! What gives? I know some buses are smoother then others but this takes the cake!!

OC Transpo: Enough with the HO HO HO

Dear OC Transpo,

I am writing today to ask your drivers to go back to using the "Hors Service" display when they are driving an out-of-service bus.

When it is -19 and I have been waiting 15 minutes for a 14 Carlington and I finally see a bus coming, but it does not say "14 Carlington" on the front but instead says "HO HO HO - Merry Christmas", I am not filled with the gladness of the season. Instead I am filled with an emotion that leads me to say "Merry f-ing Christmas, to you too, OC Transpo."

Sincerely,
Fourth Dwarf

p.s. As an alternative to "Hors Service", I am also fine with "Ottawa Senators" because I don't much care for them anyway.

OC Transpo and the Strollers

On Wednesday, the City of Ottawa's Transit Committee will be asked to consider OC Transpo's report on a new policy for the seats at the front of the bus that used to be called Courtesy Seating and are now called Priority Seating.

The report is called Priority Seating - Managing the Front of the Bus. First of all, they're going to rename the seats at the front to "Co-operative seating". If people who should give up their seats don't they can still be charged with an offence under s. 18(2) of the OC Transpo by-law, but that will be a last resort.

The "co-operative" versus "priority" seating isn't why this is going to Council. The real controversy is with the strollers. On the list of stupid things people in Ottawa get worked up over, big strollers clogging the front of buses is right up there with the use of lawn chairs at Blues Fest.

The problem for OC Transpo was that dealing with strollers was left to the discretion of the drivers. This led to the unfortunate baby-napping incident of 2008. Now this will never have to occur again because the new policy has detailed criteria for baby buggies. It starts off with:

An open stroller occupied by a child will be allowed on the bus if:

1. It is capable of being folded
2. It is capable of being safely stowed
3. It will not interfere with other passengers or with the safe movement of passengers within the transit vehicle; and
4. It can be wheeled, or (when folded) carried, through the aisle without contacting the seats.

The policy carries on with wheelchair priority, and what to do with double strollers. Although I've never tried to navigate the City with a stroller it all seems to make good sense to me. Still I have to say that their plan on what to do with the strollers that can't go inside the buses caught me by surprise. Rack'n'Stroll is the sort of innovative thinking that we don't often see in this town.

Update: Looks like City Council didn't go for the new plan.

Ottawa's Light Rail Re/Up/Set

Today, Ottawa's mayor and certain of the council are spinning their version of City Hall's latest light rail trainwreck like a 37-million-buck pinwheel. Maybe hoping that dizzying fuzzyheaded quadrupeds such as myself unto pukin', will compel us to ignore the fact that this week's good news on the light rail front is, ummm, last week's out-of-court contract settlement with Siemens AG.

Because, you see, during the election, the mayor famously vowed to "hit the reset button" on the previous administration's fatally flawed north/south light rail plan. Once in the mayor chair, he airly persuaded council to nix that signed and sealed deal in favour of his (unarticulated) better idea, claiming his vast business experience told him the penalty would be negligible. Last week the city paid Siemens that vast-bucks legal settlement.

Now we learn that the first leg they're thinking of building under the new improved light rail plan is, ummm, that fatally flawed north/south line. Because, hey, Siemens, by a huge coincidence, had already drawn the plans and done the environmental studies, before the mayor smacked that big ol' expensive button.

What Hizzoner and council apparently failed to clarify among themselves was that when you hit "reset" on a system that's nominal in the first place, you merely waste a lot of time rebooting - in this case, enough years that the damn thing would've been close to done if we'd stuck to the original plan - to get much the same system. Apparently, I am not the only one confused by council's inability to grasp this.

Sometime long before he was elected, the mayor shaved his head bald. I am not party to his reasons. My head is still as fuzzy as nature intended well-dressed coyotes about town to be. But at this point, I'm thinkin' he could hot-wax and buff that sucker 'til it glows in the dark, and he'd still look totally fuzzyheaded, next to me...

OCTranspo: A streetcar named disaster

Back in the day, we knew how to rebound from a transit disruption [read more]

Newspaper item: New York Times, July 19, 1919; Photo: Wikimedia

Things that should be paralyzing Ottawa in 2009

1. The City of Ottawa master-computer goes to war with the NCC master-computer. Snowplows battle it out with ice groomers while humans cower in their homes.
2. Everyone is grounded because all jetpacks made since 2005 are recalled to replace exploding components created by Moscow hackers who want to claim the 2nd-coldest capital honour for their city.
3. A coolant leak shuts down the superconducting coil in the monorail system.
4. City is evacuated because northwest winds are bringing a radioactive fallout cloud from a nuclear meltdown at Deep River.
5. A new psycho-pharmaceutical has made everyone telepathic so there is no need to go anywhere.

Ottawa Transit: Straight to Plan F

I see we're trying to roll out yet another Plan B on the Transit Plan thing - again. This time, $7.2 billion buys the city a couple of rail lines that don't get where a lot of transit users want to to go, And! A! Light! Rail! Tunnel! Downtown!

Hey! The times cry for boldness! Does a real city need to dig some crappy rail tunnel? They're so 19th century, and our visionary mayor is really a 20th century kinda guy. Heh. I know we've we've suggested a few Plan Bs ourselves, but now I think Ottawa just needs to leapfrog straight over all that dithering, and skip straight to the big enchilada: Plan F!

Hear me out. I've been looking into motorized para gliders, and $7,200 buys a nice one, with bulk discounts. More than adequate. Our budget buys a million of 'em. Do it! Lend them out for a minimal fee to everyone who needs to use one, just like those communal bicycles in Paris and Amsterdam. Cutting edge thinking. No need to dig a tunnel. No more buses clogging the streets. We put all that free wasted airspace to use. Utopia! Well, except for the pigeons.

Our mayor is obviously big on the cult of the amateur. He applauds when the city fires those elitist managers. He's proved willing to pitch in micromanage things himself. And since being elected, he's more than fulfilled his ripe early promise as an ultimate amateur. So I think he'll agree when I say that although these things technically fly, we don't need no stinkin' pilot licence requirements. Anybody with a toonie or so should be able to use 'em. And to show my faith in him, I think he should be the first to test the system. Do we need Plan F right this minute, or what?

Ottawa's looming graffiti crisis

Lately I've been reading overheated media coverage of Ottawa's graffiti problem. You know, Krylon Invasion, city councillors buying business constituents high pressure washers to zap offending spraybombage - like that. I've been ambivalent. I know a lot of it defaces private property, but we coyotes like certain graffiti. Some of it is really beautiful, and when I see it, it makes me happy. I speak of the true public artists. Taggers? Not so much. May their sooty black aerosol cans explode in their sweaty little mitts. I digress.

Saturday, though, I sprayed a mouthful of my customary breakfast (Piping hot crumpets, cat marmalade, steaming mug of fresh-brewed vitriol) all over my morning Petfinder. Patrick Curran, OC Transpo's business development manager, was floating a trial balloon about selling transit station names to the highest-bidding corporate sponsors. Some city councillors and the usual suspects on the editorial page seemed to like it.

The argument is that Transpo needs the money, and there's no more space for ads on the buses. Seems to me that maybe the city should just fund the service properly. But dreaming up billion dollar tunnels and harebrained 'innovations' is way more fun than making sure the existing bus system works well in the most basic ways.

Mr. Curran rather disingenuously notes that St. Laurent transit station already is named for the attached mall, and argues that opens the door to more of the same. Nice try at historical revisionism to support a thin-end-of-the-wedge propaganda technique, but, ummm, no. The mall is labelled for the rather prominent nearby boulevard that the mall promoters swiped its name from.

Ottawa is a town where, when a boneheaded fuckwit has a idea that shrieks out for rapid trashing, then tries to smoke it past us by self-diagnosing it as 'innovative', a buncha other boneheaded fuckwits will nod sagely and murmur, "Mmmm... innovative!" It's how decisions are made. But non-sequitur-ish corporate sponsorship isn't innovative. It's already been inflicted elsewhere. Yoohoo! Senators Coliseum? Which became the Corel Centre? An asshatted monument to momentary corporate hubris - and sanctioned graffiti, really. Now it's ScotiaBank Place...

Transit is about moving people efficiently. Renaming transit stations - all of which now (very handily) key on nearby geographical features - is not. We already let businesses deface the cityscape by smearing it with their kind of graffiti. We just call them 'logos', 'signs' and 'advertising'. Why let 'em further confuse a bus ride, too?