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Many current councillors think Cullen, now two defeats distant from civic office, should have faded away; he might not be the best person to make this case to them. But the numbers do seem to speak for themselves.

OC Transpo’s general manager John Manconi said there used to be a fairly well understood relationship between prices and ridership. Now, no.

“The whole transit-ridership elasticity world has been turned upside down,” Manconi told the commission. Transit ridership is flat in many Western cities, and even down noticeably in New York.

It’s changing work patterns (that was the explanation OC Transpo hazarded early in the decade, as the federal Conservatives cut the public service).

It’s crush loads on buses that’ll clear once the light-rail system opens (nobody goes any more because it’s too crowded, like Yogi Berra said).

It’s slower bus service during the LRT construction work (“I would not doubt if we have lost some riders as a result of that,” Blais said).

It’s new competition from Uber. It’s the city’s success in encouraging people to walk and bike.

“I think once LRT is up and running next year, once we’re stabilized and some of these headaches are out of our way from an inconvenience perspective, we’ll be in a much better position to understand the reason and what we think it might be in the long term,” Blais said.

It’s probably some of all these things. But if New York City is the sample, the fact its 113-year-old subway system deteriorated past a critical point into crisis a few years ago seems important. System delays have tripled in the last five years and last summer the governor formally declared the city transit authority in a state of emergency. Most of the lines use manual signalling systems that belong in museums, the power keeps going out and sometimes things catch fire.