OC Transpo is a convoluted mess of roads and neighbourhoods. Its only good feature is its ability to get passengers within a stone’s throw of their destination.
The bus service has an important job that it does poorly. Buses are habitually late. The iPhone app is lacking. But the worst part of the bus service is being stranded.
I was issued my U-Pass on Aug. 31, but I was not told that technically the pass isn’t active until Sept. 1. This is troublesome because it can leave exchange students like me stranded.
I flashed my freshly printed U-Pass to the bus driver stopped somewhere on Boulevard St. Laurent. He looked up at me and said, “That’s no good.”
I was told mere hours earlier that it would get me around the city of Ottawa while I study on a direct exchange here from my home institution of the University of Maine.
“It’s no good until midnight tonight,” the driver said. I looked at my pass and looked at the driver before stepping off the bus. All day before that moment I had been let on a half dozen other buses.
The next bus came and I tried again. When the bus that was supposed to come didn’t show for 20 minutes I began to feel a bit jittery.
Ten more minutes passed, and the crowd at the bus stop swelled. There were nine of us. When the accordion bus pulled up I snuck on through the middle door, feeling a little more criminal than normal. I hadn’t any money on me—my magical ticket to the world held firmly in my hand wouldn’t get me home. I rode that bus until where I thought I needed to get off. I needed to get off one stop down.
Another 15 minutes passed waiting for the bus to get me to the Hurdman station where I needed to transfer. When that bus pulled up and the bus driver said the same thing to me, I got off the front and sneaked in the back.
When I finally reached the transfer station my trip had taken an hour and ten minutes total, and I still had no idea which bus to take to get home.
I looked at the map and asked for help from total strangers. Everyone was too busy to help me get on the right bus so I took up asking the bus drivers.
I finally found a driver who told me, “Yeah, I go through Uplands-Hunt Club.” I flashed him my card and he repeated what all the others had said. I told him I’m not from here and that I had no money. He winked and said he’d let me know when I needed to get off. My trip ended up taking two hours and three minutes.
OC Transpo has so far been the most stressful part of being an exchange student at Carleton University. In the 2013-2014 academic year, there were 276 inbound exchange students. There could easily have been more than 250 Carleton University students like me in the same situation. This is a gap that needs attention by the university and OC Transpo.
The unrelenting machine of transportation in this city is paradoxically idealistic and awful, but there is so much to be thankful for—OC Transpo allows students like me from a place exactly 667 kilometers away to drop into Ottawa and continue their education.
