'Dude, Where's My Bus?' Ottawa man fed up with OC Transpo makes documentary exploring transit troubles

Title card for the documentary "Dude, Where's My Bus?" on YouTube. (GioTV1/YouTube)

Ask any regular user of OC Transpo about any trouble they might have had dealing with the bus or the LRT and you'll probably hear a story from every one of them.

OC Transpo's struggles have been regular news in Ottawa for years, from a major strike in 2008 to the disastrous launch of Stage 1 of LRT in 2019, to the massive deficits it is projecting in 2025. Caught up among all of this are the riders who rely on the system to get around the city.

Gio Petti is one of them. His daily 19-kilometre commute takes him from Riverside South to downtown Ottawa and back. OC Transpo is how he does it, and it often involves lengthy waits and no-show buses.

One day, he decided he'd had enough.

Petti put together a documentary on OC Transpo, asking how we got here. How did a city that was once lauded as an example of how to do transit right, and that boasted some of the highest per capita transit ridership numbers in the country, become a system that now elicits so much frustration from users?

The 43-minute film titled "Dude, Where's My Bus?" begins with his usual wait at the bus stop.

"So, I'd wait, and wait, and wait outside," he told Newstalk 580 CFRA's Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron on Thursday. "It's a two-sided deal: you wait for the bus, and you pay OC Transpo and OC Transpo is supposed to be there on time to take you where you need to go. I would complete my side of the deal; I'd wait for the bus, and it would never show up, so I really thought to myself, 'what can I do?' … I'm a podcaster, I'm a video maker … I said why not make a video about this?"

The video debuted on YouTube Wednesday and his since racked up more than 15,000 views. It follow's Petti's own journey with the system and then dives into the history of many of the decisions that were made by political leaders and city staff that led to the transit system we have now.

One particular example he pointed to is the proposed north-south corridor LRT project that, had it been built, would have seen aboveground trains carrying passengers from Barrhaven to downtown. The idea was set to go ahead but was then scrapped after the election of Larry O'Brien as mayor in 2006.

"A lot of people watched that, and they had no idea about the original line in 2006 that was canned and so many people have seen that and been like, 'if only that was around, that would have been so convenient,'" Petti said.

Cancelling the project ended up costing the city tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. 

"There are so many issues that have come, and I feel like, as I sort of poke at in the documentary, one or two we could avoid," Petti said. "One or two are easily overcome but it keeps happening over and over."

The documentary includes interviews with transit users, journalists, and even some city officials.

"From the people who I was able to talk to, probably the most groundbreaking was Riley Brockington," Petti said. "He was of great assistance in putting a lot of things into perspective. He's a city councillor who really cares about transit in the city. He's on the transit commission, he's out there looking for answers … his insights were very enlightening."

Stage 1 of LRT and the public inquiry that followed make up another portion of the documentary, but it's not all just LRT. Para Transpo, too, is part of the picture.

"As someone who's not disabled, you don't ride Para Transpo, so you don't know the struggles that people go through with that," he said.

Petti said he didn't set out to make anyone look bad or to cast anyone as a villain, but he did say there were some unsung heroes who deserve recognition.

"We don't really see a publicizing of the people who tried to prevent this… people like Councillor Diane Deans, Catherine McKenney, and Shawn Menard, among others, who did their job or tried to do their job to get the train held, to have better explanations of what was actually going on, and I think their efforts should be commended," he said. "I wish I would have had the chance to speak to Diane Deans about this because she really was a hero of the city."

Deans and Menard were two of the three councillors who voted against awarding Stage 2 LRT contracts in 2019, before Stage 1 had even launched, after raising concerns about a lack of transparency from staff about how the preferred bidders scored. It would later be revealed that SNC-Lavalin, the preferred bidder for the North-South Trillium Line extension, which is now two years behind schedule, did not initially meet the city's technical threshold but still won the contract. McKenney spearheaded attempts to call a judicial inquiry into Stage 1 of LRT before the province called its own public inquiry.

Despite a litany of issues over the years, Petti said Thursday he still believes not all hope is lost.

"I do think we can rebound. I think that Line 2, once it launches, will do a lot for the city," he said. "A lot of people have commented on that stance that I have and have said they don't think it's going to save things and they think my optimism is a bit wasted. I disagree. Obviously, it's not going to save everything, but it's going to make getting around a lot more easier."

In the meantime, he says his commute hasn't really changed much since he started his documentary journey.

"It really has been the same. Usually what happens is the first leg is getting out of the suburbs to Hurdman Station, and that's around 35 to 40 minutes and you factor in waiting time and that's another 10 minutes there," he said.

"I will say, I actually do love the LRT when it's actually working."

You can watch "Dude, Where's My Bus?" on YouTube.