Deachman: Is Ottawa missing the bus on intercity travel?

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Having one, Jordan added, would improve visitors’ experience of the city. “It could help with tourism.”

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Another visitor, Tom Bailey, compared the arrangement he found in Ottawa to the system in his hometown of Maastricht, Netherlands.

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“This is not very good,” he said. “The Dutch system is spectacular. It’s incredibly smooth and efficient.”

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We can argue about whether Ottawa needs a dedicated bus station. The Greyhound station on Catherine Street closed in 2021, after all, and the sky hasn’t yet fallen. Intercity bus travel didn’t disappear. Travellers today can choose from numerous companies serving Montreal, Toronto, Kingston and beyond.

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But no one decided that Ottawa no longer needed a bus station. We just woke up one day and the one we had was gone. Have we settled on the best arrangement, or just the one that emerged? The system works, but does it work as well as it should? Does it serve travellers who need to transfer from one carrier to another? And what does it say about Ottawa that, for many visitors, this collection of curbside stops, shopping centres and transit stations makes up the gateways to the city?

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This isn’t a new debate. Long before Greyhound left, the subject of the bus station’s location was contested. In 2010, then-mayor Larry O’Brien suggested moving it to the VIA Rail terminal on Tremblay Road, where bus, rail and — eventually — light-rail transit could all be at one hub.

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There were opponents to the idea, including Jim Watson, who would defeat O’Brien in the mayoralty election that year. “Most Canadian cities have the bus depot downtown,” Watson argued.

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Today, many bus companies do drop-offs and pickups at the train station, effectively piggybacking on the amenities that already exist there. But it’s not the only option.

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One person who has given the matter a lot of thought over the years is Janine Debanné, associate professor at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University.

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She doesn’t argue that Ottawa should simply rebuild the old Greyhound terminal. Today’s transportation landscape, she says, bears little resemblance to the one that existed when a single carrier dominated intercity bus travel. Multiple private operators, online booking and smartphones have transformed how people travel.

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“Everyone’s a bus company now,” she says.

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Yet, while tickets have become digital and booking is increasingly done online, Debanné stresses the obvious: Passengers themselves haven’t become virtual.

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“Our body is still there,” she says. “You still have luggage. You still need a place to wait. You still need washrooms. You still need to know where you’re going.”

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That’s where a transportation hub matters. It’s not just about selling tickets, but providing a space that makes travel manageable: somewhere people can orient themselves, transfer between services, ask a question of someone in charge and arrive in a city feeling welcome.

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Debanné points to Bayview as one possibility because it sits on both LRT lines and is close to downtown. The point, she adds, isn’t just the address, but creating a place where different forms of transportation, and the people using them, come together.

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And not just transportation, but a civic hub that integrates buses, transit and ride-sharing with workspaces and other community functions.

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“There could be facilities for co-work office space. There could be bicycle lending. It might be located in a place where there are markets,” Debanné says.