Ottawa comedian writes farce song about city's LRT troubles

OTTAWA -

An Ottawa comedian is providing comic relief for thousands of frustrated transit users as the Confederation Line remains out of service.

Amid the latest LRT mishap, a derailment that has kept the system closed for over a month now, Rick Currie's remake of a Johnny Cash song is ringing true.

Ottawa's light rail transit system is now a big hit in the worst way.

"We try to relieve some of the stress through comedy, I think if it does anything that's what it does, takes a lot of that stress, that frustration and at least let us laugh at it a little bit," said Currie.

A song he wrote and performed at Absolute Comedy has turned a transit tragedy into farce with lyrics like; "There's no train coming up the LRT, when we get to December it still won't run but it'll be free."

The track coming as a result of the train running off the tracks in September. Return-to-service testing began Wednesday for the first time since then. Full service isn't expected until the end of November.

Curries LRT rendition of a Johnny Cash classic was performed at Absolute Comedy and posted to YouTube. The video has been viewed over 12,000 times.

"We try to relieve some of the stress through comedy, I think if it does anything that's what it does, takes a lot of that stress, that frustration and at least let us laugh at it a little bit," Currie said.

The lyrics are filled with jokes and clever jabs at the troubled transit system; "We're jammed on the R1, I got no personal space, yeah the trains even worse than the Ottawa Redblacks."

But the reality isn't so funny, the system now hasn't run in 40 days.

"We try to relieve some of the stress through comedy, I think if it does anything that's what it does, takes a lot of that stress, that frustration and at least let us laugh at it a little bit," said transit user Myles Diano about using R1 service.

"I feel like it's just a joke at this point, it's ridiculous that it's take this long, I'm glad someone was able to show it for us make the joke for us, we're in Ottawa this is the capital of the country and this is happening it's ridiculous," added Haley Gloss who would normally use LRT daily.