For another week and a half, R1 bus service will replace the Confederation Line 1 service through to Rideau station. It is challenging to try to replace the high-capacity train with buses, but OC is doing the best it can. My ask of residents is for your continued patience while we get through this. As at other times R1 has been implemented, waits can sometimes be long and the buses can sometimes be crowded at peak.
If I can, I’d suggest to residents traveling on transit that they give themselves a bit more time than usual. It is construction season in Ottawa and the buses are forced to share the road with cars – they can sometimes get bunched up.
I traveled by bus this morning for meetings in the office and the effect of bunching was evident. If you have time to wait, consider skipping the first R1 that arrives at the station during morning peak. They arrive regularly and while the first bus may be packed, the next one may be significantly less so. I waited an extra four minutes or so today to get a comfortable and fast ride in to O’Connor, which I’ve documented here. A colleague was also traveling by bus/R1 a bit later than I was this morning and sent me his screen shots from the Transit app showing bus spacing to match my own, viewable in the short video below.
Since I’m here, I’d like to also quickly address an assertion that the R1 detour is making the Scott Street westbound detour more challenging due to the volume of buses. I’ve taken that seriously, but my own count doesn’t bear out much discernible impact. Amidst the hundreds of vehicles coming through at peak, an occasional bus every three or four minutes isn’t even background noise to the overall numbers. Overall, I’m satisfied that the Burnside detour isn’t wildly bottlenecked. For about a 20 minute period around 4:30 there can be backups to the traffic circle, but generally speaking traffic is moving. My larger concern is about the speed of vehicles coming around the traffic circle where at peak there might be 10-15 pedestrian crossings, something to which we’ve alerted the City and asked that they address. You can see my counts below (note the 15% increase in non-bus motor vehicles from Monday to Tuesday – not surprising, obviously).
| 15-minute count start at | |||||||
| 7/15/2024 15:45 | 7/15/2024 16:00 | 7/15/2024 16:15 | 7/15/2024 16:30 | 7/15/2024 16:45 | 7/15/2024 17:00 | Sum | |
| Motor vehicle | 116 | 138 | 146 | 132 | 152 | 134 | 818 |
| Bus | 6 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 36 |
| Bike | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
| 7/16/2024 15:45 | 7/16/2024 16:00 | 7/16/2024 16:15 | 7/16/2024 16:30 | 7/16/2024 16:45 | 7/16/2024 17:00 | Sum | |
| Motor vehicle | 148 | 154 | 172 | 155 | 146 | 163 | 938 |
| Bus | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 11 | 39 |
| Bike | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 15 |