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Take a personal example. My younger son has been looking for a house with a quick transit connection to his job at TD Place. A bus from his home in the Kanata suburb of Morgan’s Grant takes an astounding one hour and 32 minutes, 22 minutes of that being walking time.

The solution would seem to be one of the 1960s suburbs inside the Greenbelt, but the numbers are discouraging. A neighbourhood near St. Laurent, only 6.6 kilometres from work, still takes 38 minutes by bus. It’s a 10 minute drive. Nearby Elmvale Acres is a 43-minute trip for the same distance. Queensway Terrace North is a 56 minute bus trip, but a 15-minute drive. Even a street off Bank, just 8.8 kilometres south of work, takes 44 minutes by transit, 13 minutes by car.

The circuitous journeys, frequent stops and requirement to walk part of the way are all part of what make transit slower, but when it comes to trip time, transit is wildly uncompetitive unless it involves the transitway and a major destination.

And that’s when the buses run on schedule.

OC Transpo aims for 90 per cent on-time service. It describes this as “what may be the most ambitious on-time performance target for transit anywhere in North America.” Great target, but Transpo is not hitting it, not even close.

Transpo says “the emphasis is placed upon not running early, which exposes customers to missing their bus,” but in 2016, 25 per cent of buses ran early and between 11 and 13 per cent ran late. In the first half of last year only 65 per cent of buses ran on time, and the number eroded to 63 per cent in the last half of the year.