Ottawa's mayor needs to start using OC Transpo | Opinion

I don’t know if the Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has some ceremonial “first act” planned for when he and the rest of council are sworn in next month — raise a flag, lower a tax, declare it Ottawa Mindfulness Day. Whatever.

But I would like to suggest one act — a very unceremonious act that I think would endear him not only to his supporters, but to some of the many Ottawans whose votes went elsewhere.

I would like him to take public transit to work.

Not as a media photo-op. Not as a performance. Not for a TikTok reel or Insta pic.

And not just once.

I would like him to take public transit ALL THE TIME.

To work. From work. To meetings away from city hall. To ribbon cuttings, sod-turnings and helicopter announcements. To plowing matches, parades and other community events. To the grocery store.

I want Sutcliffe to stand at a bus stop on a frigid February morning, wondering whether the bus that’s already 17 minutes late is coming at all. I want him to type the stop number into OC Transpo’s app-of-despair, look at his watch and shake his fist and curse the snowy heavens. I want him to be late for a meeting because the train broke down. I want him to realize that getting from one part of the city to another can involve more transfers than a flight to Australia.

I want him to be recognized by other riders, and I want them to tell him in excruciating detail about their daily peregrinations.

Ottawa has oodles of problems that need attention. Housing and housing affordability. Homelessness. The ByWard Market. The downtown core, and Wellington Street’s place in it. Federal downsizing. Roads, arenas and other crumbling infrastructure. The new library. Garbage. Policing and public safety.

The mayor won’t solve all of them by taking the bus.

But he might gain a better appreciation of what it’s like to be an Ottawa resident who doesn’t have the luxury of simply abandoning public transit when it fails.

If he were inconvenienced by public transit — I mean REALLY inconvenienced — then perhaps that problem would be dealt with with a bit more speed and determination. There’s nothing quite like experiencing a problem first-hand to concentrate the mind on solving it. And OC Transpo desperately needs a concentration of minds.

After all, public transit isn’t just about getting from point A to point B. It’s about being able to hold down a job, attend classes, visit a doctor, buy groceries or simply see friends without having to make a backup plan for every trip.

For some Ottawans, an unreliable bus might mean being late for dinner. For others, it can mean missing a job interview or being docked pay. And the people who suffer the most are the ones who have no alternative. If you own a car, you can give up on OC Transpo — admittedly to sit in gridlock, but at least listen to your favourite music with the speakers turned up to 11. But if you can’t afford a car, or can’t drive, you’re pretty much stuck with whatever service the city provides.

That’s why public transit should be the mayor’s, and council’s, top priority — not because the other problems are unimportant, but because transit intersects with so many of them.

Affordable housing, for example, becomes less attractive if you need a car to get anywhere. And how do you convince people to go downtown to work, shop, eat and attend events if getting there and back is such an ordeal?

When city hall can’t reliably deliver something as fundamental as public transit, it’s not difficult to understand why residents lose faith in its ability to do anything properly. Imagine how much public confidence could (eventually) be restored if it (finally) got this one right.

Additionally, there are side benefits to having the mayor ride the rails and buses. For one, he’ll hear from people who can’t take a morning off work to appear before a council committee, or who don’t belong to business associations or community groups with his cellphone number. People who don’t attend galas.

Instead, they’ll be standing beside him at the bus stop.

And the mayor’s driver? No need to fire him. Ottawa has plenty of people who could use a lift.

On Mondays, he could make deliveries for the Ottawa Food Bank. On Tuesdays, he could drive cancer patients to their appointments. Wednesdays could be reserved for taking seniors to the grocery store.

You get the idea. Every now and then, he could drive OC Transpo executives around and show them all the places their buses are supposed to go.

I can already hear Sutcliffe pushing back on the idea. Ottawa is a huge city, and the mayor has a busy schedule. Some destinations are difficult — dare I say impossible? — to reach by bus.

But that’s exactly the problem. If the city’s public transit isn’t good enough for the person responsible for helping oversee it, why should it be good enough for the people who have no choice but to use it?

And perhaps, after a month or three of standing at bus stops, missing connections and arriving frostbitten and late for meetings, the mayor will begin to appreciate the distance between the reassuring statistics in OC Transpo’s performance reports and the reality for people who rely on the system every day. Especially when he’s standing in the cold, late for a meeting with the premier and wondering if the bus will actually arrive.

Welcome to Ottawa, your worship.

Your ride should be along shortly.