Ottawa man stranded for 7 hours after taxi, bus, don't show up

When Michael Lifshitz left Toronto’s Union Station Saturday night, he was prepared for a long journey home to Ottawa.

What he didn’t expect was to spend the night in a hotel lobby, waiting more than seven hours for the ride that never came.

“It was faster to take the train from Toronto than to get home from Tremblay train station,” Lifshitz said.

Lifshitz uses a wheelchair and Saturday night had arranged for an accessible taxi to pick him up at Tremblay Station. After two hours of waiting—now past midnight—he made the decision to try to catch the final bus; only to find the cab he’d called was never coming.

“I called to cancel my cab, because I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time trying to come get me and the dispatcher tells me there was no actual call on record for me, so I basically sat two hours waiting for no reason,” he said.

Instead, he headed to Pimisi Station, hoping to bus to his Carling Avenue home.

There, Lifshitz says, he and several others waited but the bus never came.

“The bus never showed. At 1:23, when the other bus was supposed to be, it never came,” he said.

According to OC Transpo’s website, the bus was detoured for Bluesfest, instead arriving on Albert street.

“During Bluesfest, OC Transpo has a detour in effect between 5 p.m. and 4 a.m. During these times, this service stop is not available at Booth, as barricades are in place at the Albert Street intersection… OC Transpo had multiple customer service representatives stationed around Pimisi Station all evening to support customers catch their buses,” OC Transpo wrote in a statement.

But the changes were not reflected in text updates from OC Transpo to Lifshitz’s phone. They show the bus was due to arrive at 12:53 a.m., and again at 1:23 a.m., but do not note the change of location.

“My solution was I took Lyon LRT to go to the Marriott, figuring if I can’t get a cab I can at least get a room to sleep for the night but Bluesfest weekend, terrible time to get a hotel, everything was sold out,” Lifshitz said.

Instead, he spent the night in the lobby of the downtown hotel, on the phone for hours with other taxi companies, hoping to find an accessible taxi that could meet him on short notice.

“At around 4 a.m., [Blue Line Taxi] called to tell me that none of the cabs—they couldn’t find anyone. They tried calling accessible taxis but no one wants to do the fare,” Lifshitz said.

It wasn’t until 5:30 a.m. that a cab finally arrived and by 6 a.m.—more than seven hours after he arrived at Tremblay Station—Lifshitz was home.

“It boggles my mind that there’s not a single accessible taxi in a city of a million people, and I get it’s the middle of the night, I’m not saying have all of them, but at least have one,” he said.

Lifshitz says he doesn’t fault the taxi drivers, or even the companies, but argues there needs to be more incentives to make accessible transportation more available.

“I think there needs to be a realization, it’s not like I can call a buddy and say can you pick me up,” he said.

CTV News Ottawa reached out to Capital Taxi for comment but the CEO was out of the country and unavailable for an interview.