Imagine waiting half an hour in -20 C weather for a bus that may not come. This experience is all too familiar for many OC Transpo riders, including documentary filmmaker Gio Petti, a Riverside South resident. So, he decided to do something about it.
Using skills from his day job as a digital content producer, Petti created the YouTube documentary “Dude, Where’s My Bus?” outlining the history of Ottawa’s transit system. The film has garnered around 141,000 views, sparking discussion about transit reliability in Ottawa.
The Charlatan sat down with Petti to learn more about his film and his experience with Ottawa’s public transit shortcomings.
The Charlatan (TC): Why did you choose to make this documentary about public transit?
Gio Petti (GP): It’s funny. The idea for this started because I was outside waiting for the bus, and it’s a two-sided deal: your part of the deal is that you go to where the bus is supposed to stop for the designated time with fare. The other side of the deal, which is OC Transpo’s side, is that they show up to that spot at the allotted time, they take your fare and take you where you have to go.
But I noticed that I would always be there for my side of the deal, but the bus would never be there. It got to a point where I realized, “How is this acceptable?” I thought to myself, “I can’t reform OC Transpo myself, so why don’t I take these skills I have and try to present these issues, to amplify them to have people recognize that this is a key issue?”
TC: Why did you choose a short documentary as the medium to present your work?
GP: I really wanted to make it personal because we’ve heard on the news a million times, “the buses aren’t running, the service is bad” — we’ve seen these stories. I wanted to present this personal view from the suburbs, because you don’t really hear that particular voice of how bad transit is. I felt like this wouldn’t have any edge if this wasn’t from that personal aspect.
I felt like a documentary was the perfect form because I’m able to shoot all these different angles about the situation, about how it got to where it is, the story of transit in Ottawa and the future. I knew from the beginning I did want to present it as a documentary and interview people and talk to people, because for me, this felt like the perfect format.
TC: What should OC Transpo do to improve service in the suburbs for transit riders?
GP: The best thing is to make sure connections to the train stations are running, because that’s going to be the biggest issue. I found there’s a lot of criticism against Line 1, but when it worked I thought it was a fantastic system. It was always getting to Line 1 that was the issue.
As outlined in the film, there’s a lot of talk about performance versus reliability. Performance means the bus eventually shows up, reliability means the bus actually makes it on time. Unfortunately, the buses are tracked specifically on performance rather than reliability. I think OC Transpo needs to check on making sure buses come more frequently and that they can be relied on. If people can rely on these buses, they will rely on Line 2 to get them places and more people will choose transit over taking the car or taking an Uber.
TC: How did you shoot the documentary?
GP: I don’t want to seem like the auteur, Tommy Wiseau-type, but it was all me. A lot of actual documentary makers will cringe when they hear me say this, but it was actually shot, believe it or not, all on an iPhone. I had lapel mics, a tripod and a ring light, and I would just go around to wherever it was I had to film. I’d set it up. It was all me co-ordinating this stuff having to co-ordinate interviews, record interviews, edit interviews and doing all of this between working two jobs that are considered full-time work six days a week. It really took up a lot of time. And, I was very surprised that on that basis, I was able to pull this off.
TC: Besides securing interviews, what challenges did you face while making this documentary?
GP: As far as editing goes, the hardest part was actually stitching everything together. Every time I conducted an interview, it sort of led me down a new rabbit hole. So, finding all the information on OC Transpo was going through hours and hours of news reports and watching old videos. Sometimes you’d find a video of a topic you wanted, and then the link would be dead so that was a huge part that was deeply frustrating.
Then, from that information, trying to piece together the documentary, because you can have all this information, but you need to have a storyline. You need to have it presented in a cohesive stake. One part that was very helpful was presenting drafts to people, whether that be rough video drafts or rough script edits and getting input from people. That was super helpful especially when working on a one-person team.
TC: Why are you optimistic about OC Transpo despite all its past missteps?
GP: It’s so easy to be negative about it and granted, I have been negative about it a lot. But this is something to be optimistic about. Line 2, specifically, is something I was optimistic about and I think it turned out to be true. The train is a lot more reliable than the buses and the times I have ridden it, it’s been a smooth ride, it’s been an excellent ride.
My only criticism is that travel time could be a little better getting to the station. Getting to Limebank Station has been a bit of a struggle, especially in the cold weather, but it’s been an improvement and it’s a step in the right direction. Optimism is needed and I think we should try our best to be a little optimistic about this. This optimism, and maybe you can call it fake optimism, I think is really going to help us get out of this.
TC: Did you anticipate the public’s positive reaction to your film?
GP: I was actually shocked when I first saw the success of it. My expectation was this hopefully gets to the right people and maybe we get 100 views, 1,000 views. But the fact that it reached so many views in that short amount of time, I genuinely was surprised.
I think it was because it struck a nerve with a lot of people and they recognized the struggle whether you lived downtown, in Centretown, in the south end, in the suburbs or anywhere you’ve had this issue with buses. It was really incredible hearing about these issues and having people’s voices be amplified. My goal was to amplify the issues, and dare I say, I succeeded in this. Hopefully the issue has been amplified, and a lot of people are thinking differently about transit.
TC: Why did you choose to end the film with Rick Currie’s “OC Transpo Strike Song”?
GP: The way I found a lot of the old footage is that I would go on YouTube and search OC Transpo and watch news clips. I eventually stumbled upon his song and I thought it was hilarious. He actually made an updated one for the LRT shutting down, but I wanted to use the original because it talks about the bus not coming. So I sent him an email, and I was like, “Could I use this in the piece? Do you want compensation?” He was kind enough to let me use it for free. I knew I wanted to end it on some kind of note, and I felt like we’re still waiting for the bus, and here’s a song about it.
TC: What’s next for you as a documentary maker?
GP: The one thing I want to say is that I don’t want to specifically become the transit guy as far as video production goes. On that note, which is ironic, I still want to talk about a few transit related things.
I would like to make a sequel and there is a transit-related video in the works. I’m not sure exactly when that will happen, but hopefully sometime near the end of this year. No promises, but there are a lot more topics, a lot more things I want to cover. Thanks to the response of this piece, it has given me an outlet to explore similar topics and produce more content in future.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Featured image by Bianca McKeown/The Charlatan.
