“We all feel the same. It’s not being used. It’s a waste,” said resident Rylee Batista. Chapel Hill South park and ride is located at Navan Road and Brian Coburn Boulevard — a major thoroughfare in south Orleans. It opened on October 27, 2019 and cost the city about $8.2 million. The lot has 263 free parking spaces and was slated to expand to 427, according to OC Transpo’s website. But the stop only serves two regular bus routes — the 32 and 34 which run about every 25 minutes most of the day — and two other buses run weekday mornings to nearby high schools, according to OC Transpo. This is where Chapel Hill South park and ride is located in Ottawa. (Leah Hansen/CBC) An online OC Transpo brochure about the park and ride advertises it as “ideal for customers traveling from south Orleans and nearby communities” and tells customers to “park your car and let OC Transpo take you to the rest road – 35 minutes to the city center! But this is far from reality. According to Google Map’s transit planner, it takes about an hour to travel by transit from the park to CBC Ottawa’s downtown office during the morning rush hour. Driving into the park and driving from a random residential address in the nearby Avalon neighborhood, the total commute is about an hour and 15 minutes. But it takes about 53 minutes from the same address directly to CBC Ottawa via transit. An empty Chapel Hill South park and ride on a weekday afternoon in September 2022. (Reno Patry/CBC) CBC has visited the park and taken the ride three times between September and October for two-hour periods, twice during rush hour. At most, he noticed five cars parked there, and sometimes none. In each case, the CBC observed a passing rider get off the bus and drive away in his car. several non-transit users—such as a skateboarder and dog walkers—park there for recreational purposes. But the city maintains the location “is strategic.” A beautiful morning to open the new pic.twitter.com/BpgEfumj4Y —@StephenBlais Stanimir Cvetanov runs next to the park and walks almost every day. The Chapel Hill South resident said he was so confused by the gap, he wrote a one-star Google review. “Textbook example of waste of taxpayers’ money. Hardly anyone was using it even before the pandemic,” reads his review. Cvetanov told the CBC that as a transit rider before COVID, he was “excited at first” about the park and drove thinking more express buses would run through it. This excitement was short-lived. “That upset me, you mean, you made something so huge for just two bus lines?” said Tsvetanov. Social media posts about the park and ride show cheeky comments dating back two years using terms like “mass incompetence” and “colossal failure” to describe the city’s decision to build it. This is a snapshot of some comments on the OC Transpo Facebook page. (OC Transpo/Facebook)
Concerns about racing, forest clearing
Batista, president of the Chapel Hill South Community Association, said the lot was used primarily as an “$8 million cement playground” during the pandemic. “We came here with our Rollerblades to play hockey,” he said. Batista has seen kids on bikes, motorized toys and skateboards using the space. WATCHES | There is “no reason” anyone in Chapel Hill would use the park and ride, the association says:
Resident says Orléans park and ride mostly empty as bus routes remain limited
Rylee Batista, president of the Chapel Hill South Community Association, says it’s disappointing that more bus routes haven’t been added to connect the Chapel Hill South Park and Ride to the LRT. At night, however, it was used as a drifting and car racing spot, so barricades were put in place to prevent that, he said. “You can hear them flipping out or drifting off,” Batista recalls, pointing to the fence. “That’s what it did — it reduced that noise.” A car parked in Chapel Hill South park and ride in Orleans in September. This car was one of three parked in the lot at the time. (Reno Patry/CBC) The park and ride also replaced a forest, he said, causing some residents to worry about the impact it might have on the green space and creek nearby. Batista said she has spoken with city councilors about its future and other transportation issues in south Orleans. “We don’t have good service,” he said. “But where is the next step? Where is Plan B? There doesn’t seem to be one [one].” Several of these yellow notices are posted on the barricade, blocking most of the park and ride parking spaces. It states: “Premises are temporarily closed while Park & Ride usage is low”. (Reno Patry/CBC)
“Cart before the horse” status: resident
Heather Buchanan, a resident of the nearby Bradley Estates neighborhood, calls the park and ride a “glorified transit stop.” Buchanan sits on her community association’s development committee and explained that the lot was built in anticipation of a future Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor — bus-only streets — in the area, a project that hasn’t been implemented since the 1990s. More recently this March, after years of study, planning and consultation, the city council voted to move forward with one of the few options – Option 7 – to extend Brian Coburn Avenue and create a Cumberland transit through the Greenbelt that would connect the park and drive to Blair Street. But the city has not set aside money for the projected $300 million cost and is running into trouble with NCC, which owns the Greenbelt but refuses to release it. Some papers predict it may not happen before 2030. “We were all very outraged that we were going to have this ‘cart before the horse parking,’” he said. “This is all based on a BRT … that doesn’t exist.” WATCHES | Buchanan explains why park and ride doesn’t make sense right now:
Orleans’ underuse is park-and-ride in a pod, putting ‘the cart before the horse,’ resident says
Resident Heather Buchanan says the Chapel Hill South Park and Ride was meant to serve a bus rapid transit system that doesn’t currently exist. If the city wants South Orleanians to use the park and ride now, he said it must first improve the roads that lead them there. Buchanan said the money would be better spent building a larger park and ride at the Blair LRT station, which currently only has 21 spaces for permit holders. Screenshot of a City of Ottawa presentation on the Brian Coburn Extension/Cumberland Transitway Environmental Assessment Study. This proposed design shows a proposed bus rapid transit (BRT) adjacent to the Chapel Hill South Park and ride. (City of Ottawa) “This park and ride is basically a white elephant,” said Rachelle Lecours, president of the Greater Avalon Community Association, which represents communities east of the lot. “People are upset because this money could have gone to provide better … bus services.”
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Lecours said the two buses that go through it do “milk runs” to nearby communities, so it’s easier for residents to get on the bus near their homes anyway. As an interim solution pending future BRT, he suggests implementing express buses that would take people directly from the park to downtown or LRT stations — either the less-busy Blair or Cyrville stations. A person boards an OC Transpo bus at the park and ride in September 2022. The transit rider told CBC that he has come out of his home nearby to use the bus station, but has never used it as a park and ride. (Reno Patry/CBC)
City says location is ‘strategic’
CBC asked the city for an interview with OC Transpo, but said no one is available. Instead, it provided an emailed statement from its director of transportation planning, who said the location “is strategic,” based on future BRT and population growth in southeast Orleans. Vivi Chi wrote that the rapid transit project is on target to open after 2031. Meanwhile, a statement attributed to Pat Scrimgeour, director of systems and customer planning, blamed the pandemic, saying usage “has not yet reached levels seen before the pandemic.” Several residents told the CBC the park and ride was underutilized in the five months it was open before the pandemic. “Staff will continue to monitor usage, collect feedback and make adjustments,” Scrimgeour wrote. He said the city doesn’t track how much it spends on maintaining that park and trail.
