You May Be Surprised Who Has the Best Transit Election Promise for Ottawa

And what was the Mayor doing at a partisan political event?

Photo credit: CPAC

Recent Ontario election promises on transit were welcome news. Welcome in the sense that provincial parties are now recognizing that municipalities cannot afford to operate transit on their own.

Which promise would be best for Ottawa?

Campaign promises

Conservatives

The Conservatives are promising to upload the LRT¹ to the province. Specifically, they would put Metrolinx in charge of our LRT system.

Doug Ford says this will save Ottawa $4 billion over 30 years. That works out to $133 million a year on average.

Liberals

The Liberals are also promising to upload the LRT to the province, but not to Metrolinx. Given Metrolinx’s poor record in building the Eglington and Ontario LRT lines in Toronto, they don’t have faith in the corporation’s ability to manage the Ottawa LRT.

They haven’t released details on how this would happen. But let’s assume their math is the same as the Conservatives math, working out to $133 million a year on average.

New Democrats

The NDP is promising to fund half of transit operations, restoring the level of provincial funding that was provided prior to the Conservative cuts in 1998.

Details have not been provided, and its hard to know if this will apply to all or only certain parts of the operating budget. For the City of Ottawa, with an annual transit operating budget of over $850 million, the NDP plan could save taxpayers $300-400 million a year.

Greens

The Green Party have little in their platform about transit, other than a line in their New Deal for Municipalities to “upload costs to the province that had previously been unfairly downloaded onto municipalities like community housing, shelters, and transit funding”.

This would be similar to the NDP plan, which restores the 50% of transit funding that was cancelled by the province in 1998. However, the Green Party’s decision to not address the issue of transit more centrally in their campaign makes it difficult to assess the importance of this promise to the party.

LRT uploading

The Conservative announcement got the most attention. It was a bold announcement regarding a major pain point for Ottawa. The presence of the Mayor and many Council members at the announcement likely gave this story additional oxygen.

How good would LRT uploading be for the people of Ottawa?

Financial

Uploading the LRT will save the City a considerable amount of money.

It would also take a major problem — the City’s inability to fix transit — and make it someone else’s problem.

Accountability

In the Ottawa Citizen, Mohamed Adam provides has an excellent assessment of the proposal.

He points out the challenges that Metrolinx has had in building the Ontario and Eglington lines in Toronto. He also points to how Ottawa Council and riders will lose oversight for performance, as well as the practical challenges of providing an integrated transit network in which different entities are responsible for the different train and bus services.

Performance

Uploading the LRT would have little impact on network performance. The commitment is about relieving the financial burden on the City, not about improving the quality of that service to customers.

The Metrolinx model is to outsource construction, maintenance and operations to third parties. It could well outsource the Ottawa light rail to the existing players, i.e., OC Transpo for operations and Rideau Transit Maintenance for upkeep.

Which would be best for Ottawa?

The NDP transit announcement is the most generous. It provides more than double the cash that the City would receive from the province under the Conservative or Liberal announcements.

The NDP announcement is also the best for users. An injection of operating dollars would provide OC Transpo with the ability to improve transit frequency and reliability. It is unlikely that uploading the LRT under the Conservative and Liberal announcements would do much to improve the day-to-day experience of using transit in the nation’s capital.

The NDP announcement is the one that would best fix transit in Ottawa.

Last thoughts

I can’t help but feel that it was inappropriate for the Mayor and Council members to attend a partisan campaign event.

The comments from the Mayor and local councillor suggested they saw this as essentially an official announcement by the government.

When asked if his attendance was appropriate, the Mayor said that he would be willing to accept invitations from any political party.

But does Sutcliffe understands that Ford was using his attendance to further partisan interests? You hope Sutcliffe would know better by now.

1. UPDATE: 2025/02/19. One reader asked what was involved in “uploading” the Light Rail Transit to the province. While details have not been provided, uploading refers to one level of government transferring ownership and responsibility for an asset or a service to a higher level of government. When an asset is uploaded, it is common for a city to benefit financially but to lose control over service quality. In this case, the City of Ottawa would turn over the ownership of the LRT, and the responsibility to maintain and run the LRT to the Province of Ontario. Uploading would relieve the City of the financial burden of running rail operations and maintaining the system (although it is not clear who would be responsible for existing LRT debt charges). Once uploaded, the Province would take over decision making related to the LRT. If the Conservatives are returned to power, the LRT would be uploaded to the provincial agency, Metrolinx. It is unknown at this point how Metrolinx would engage OC Transpo or Ottawa City Council in running a train system that integrates with the local bus system.