
OC Transpo touts strong O-Train ridership during Ottawa Bluesfest
This year's edition of the popular music festival marks the first time that the north-south Line 2 and the Line 4 airport spur have been in operation alongside the east-west Line 1, which stops right outside the festival grounds at LeBreton Flats.
'Strong ridership was observed throughout the festival with an estimated 650,000 customer trips on Line 1 and 87,000 customer trips on Line 2,' said acting general manager of Transit Services Troy Charter in a media release Tuesday.
Charter says the busiest day was July 18, when Green Day was the headliner, which had a combined 112,000 customers trips on Lines 1 and 2.
'Strong usage of the new Park & Rides connecting customers with Line 2 was also observed,' Charter wrote, though no specific numbers were included in the release.
Festivalgoers could board an OC Transpo bus, an O-Train, or take Para Transpo using their Bluefest tickets during the festival.
'Transit service performed as planned. Signage was placed at various locations to help customers during the festival. Staff were at key locations to support customers throughout the festival, and announcements were made in and around stations,' Charter said.
There was one hiccup with signage, when some people spotted mistranslated signs for eastbound travellers that said 'vers l'ouest' in French, which means 'westbound.' OC Transpo said the signs were quickly replaced.
Charter said OC Transpo will continue to review operations to capture lessons learned and improve the customer experience at future major events.
More than 250,000 people attended Ottawa Bluesfest this year.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Ministers Island is latest tourist site planning to hand keys back to province
Ministers Island is the only tourist attraction in New Brunswick where visitors can drive across the ocean floor, but the tides of change threaten to overtake the historic site in Saint Andrews. The board of the charity that runs Ministers Island says it is unable to keep the popular attraction going with the $100,000 it receives for from the province for its operations budget. "We've tried everything and we've tried everything for 17 years," said John Kershaw, chair of the board of the Van Horne Estate on Ministers Island. "We've decided as a board that unless we get additional investment from the province, we are going to, in August, give six months' notice that we will not operate next year." Ministers Island, accessible only at low tide, was once owned by Sir William Van Horne, who was famous for getting the Canadian Pacific Railway built. With an admission ticket, visitors get to explore the island Van Horne once called his summer home. Popular attractions include the mansion, bathhouse, livestock barn, windmill and walking trails that cross the island from shore to shore. It is one of many historic attractions in Saint Andrews. Kershaw argues that similar historic sites in the province, including Kings Landing, receive significantly more provincial funding even though they attract comparable numbers of visitors. According to its annual report, Kings Landing gets $3.7 million as a provincial operating grant on top of other non-recurring grants from the province. "We just feel that that level of difference is just not fair," Kershaw said. These historic sites are both owned by the province and operated by external boards. Kings landing saw 34,000 visitors last year and Ministers Island saw 24,000. Does 10,000 more visitors justify millions more in funding? The New Brunswick government bought Ministers Island in 1977, and the island was declared a national historic site about 20 years later. Ever since the Van Horne Estate on Ministers Island was set up this century, every chair of the board "has been calling on the government to enhance our level of funding," Kershaw said. The board functions as a custodian for the island, overseeing operations for the province. Operational funding to the island increased to $130,000 from $33,000 in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, then moved down to $100,000 in 2020-2021, where it has stayed each year since. Funding for the island also comes from various donations and non-recurring grants. WATCH | 'We're not fiscally sustainable' Uncertain future for Ministers Island 35 minutes ago The board is only able to hire one full-time paid employee to oversee operations on the island. The rest of the work is stretched among volunteer board members and seasonal employees. Kershaw said this is not enough help to sustain the island. The Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture did not allow CBC News to interview Tourism Minister Isabelle Theriault and sent a statement instead. Despite the board's concerns, the statement said, the department is "committed to ensuring the continued conservation and public enjoyment of Ministers Island." "We renewed the funding that had been provided in previous years that Ministers Island received in the past," Premier Susan Holt said at a recent news when asked about the site's predicament. "At this point in time, the government doesn't have additional money to put more money into those heritage sites." Holt said that "the cost to operate is going up and that's leaving them with shortfalls. About $900,000 was cut from the provincial tourism budget in March. Not the first historical site to speak out The island's board is not the first to speak out about a lack of funding in New Brunswick. MacDonald Farm in Miramichi had to close because it didn't have the money to stay open. This historical site is also owned by the government but run by the Highland Society of New Brunswick at Miramichi. "We are a completely volunteer committee that operates this site and we just felt that having to fight to keep this site open is not something that we have the energy to do anymore," said society president Dawn Lamkey MacDonald. Impact on Saint Andrews tourism The lack of funding isn't just a worry for the Ministers Island board but also for the Explore Saint Andrews, the town's tourism marketing board. "Heritage and tourism is a big part of what draws people to Saint Andrews," said Explore Saint Andrews board member James Geneau. "I would argue that Minister's Island is an attraction that has lots of opportunity with a huge audience." Ganeau said that closing the island to tourists would have a significant impact on tourism that Saint Andrew's economy desperately depends on. "Losing that is going to be significant in terms of the overall offering that Saint Andrews can provide to tourists," Geneau said. "It's part of a broader offering which makes the area a destination for not just a night, but multiple days." Saint Andrews tourism works as a collective cluster with neighbouring sites such as the Huntsman Marine Science Center, Algonquin Golf Course, and the Blockhouse supporting each other, drawing visitors to stay in town for longer.


CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Uncertain future for Ministers Island
The board that runs Ministers Island, just off Saint Andrews, says it isn't getting enough provincial funding to keep the tourist attraction going.


CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
How Eadweard Muybridge revolutionized photography and got away with murder
Eadweard Muybridge is best known for his iconic series of photos of a horse in motion that proved it fully left the ground while running. But Muybridge also took impressive landscapes of Alaska and Yosemite National Park, invented cutting-edge photography techniques used in Hollywood blockbusters, and quite literally got away with murder after finding out his wife was having an affair — all of which caught the attention of Canadian animator and graphic novelist Guy Delisle. "I knew Muybridge, but I didn't know all of this life. And I thought, wow, that's crazy. He had gone through so many things that I thought this could be a good subject for a book," said Delisle. Delisle's latest graphic novel, Muybridge, tells the story behind the man whose books, Animals in Motion and The Human Figure in Motion, are still used by animators as reference books today. Here's part of his conversation with Day 6 host Brent Bambury. Let's talk about the images in Animals in Motion, especially the most famous ones of the horses running. When you look at those images, what do you see? There's kind of a strange mix because they look very modern, but you can tell that they are from a very old time and it's back in the days where … they had no instant photo. And he still managed to achieve that for the first time with the horse, so that's why this sequence is very symbolic because that's the achievement of his lifetime. I think he spent seven years just achieving that. And after that, he applied the technique that he developed for the horse at full speed on everything that's moving, basically, animals and humans. But back in the 1800s, there was this unresolved question about whether all four of the horses' hooves leave the ground at the same time, or is one of them always touching the ground to support the animal.... Why was it so important to Edward Muybridge to be able to answer that question? It was not so much important to Muybridge, [but] actually to his sponsor, who was the richest guy in the United States at the time, Leland Stanford, the guy who actually opened up Stanford University later on. He was very rich and he [bred] horses and he was really enthusiastic about horses. He wanted to know exactly how the horse moved in order to breed them better. And it's a bit technical, it's hard to imagine, but it was a big subject at the time between horse people. And he asked Muybridge because he was a famous photographer.… He asked him to take a picture of a horse at full speed. So he had to go to a speed of 1/1,000th of a second to have something clear with not a blurry photo. So they tried and it took a long time, but Stanford is not the kind of guy who you can say no to. So Muybridge had to invent a few things to achieve that. It seems that you suggest that Muybridge was not necessarily interested in the question and the debate about the horse's hooves on the ground, but he was interested in whether the science could be developed, whether the science of photography could answer the question. For him, that was what was important. Is that true? Yeah, I guess he was caught in the question. I don't think he was such a big horse fan. But the question was very interesting because you can see that through all of his life, he has invented stuff. He invented a special lens for his camera to be able to have clouds on pictures, because back in the days when you would take long, like one minute, [to take a] picture, so the sky would be white. So he invented something so that he can add clouds afterwards. So he was the first one to have a very nice sky with clouds in his pictures. So I thought for him, it was a challenge. Like, OK, how can we do that? So he actually invented the shutter. It was like a guillotine system, which goes down very quickly. And he was able to go to one at 1/500th of a second with that. Then at one point, after a few tries he said, "We have to put like 12 cameras in a row. And while the horse is passing in front of these cameras, there's going to be a little wire going to trigger the camera and the horse is going to take the picture while he's running in front." The system worked … so you can see actually that the horse for a few steps is floating. It's not touching the ground. So Stanford had his answer and that was first time, actually, that people would see something that the camera could see, but not the eye could see. So it was quite a breakthrough. While he was away taking photographs, working on commissions, his wife had an affair. Muybridge finds out about this affair and he shoots and kills the man with whom she was having this affair. Muybridge goes to trial for murder and he gets off. Why? What happened? During the trial, he said, "Yeah, I killed that guy because he's probably the father of the kid that I thought was my kid." All the jury were actually men with children and it's in California in 1870, in a state where there were two men for one woman. So the jury decided that he did what he had to do, [so] he walked out of the court freely and under the applause of the people. Muybridge was a huge influence in early photography and then in motion pictures. But as someone now who knows his life very well, and as somebody whose own life is built around the creation of images, what is the thing that stands out the most for you about Edward Muybridge? For me, I still have that book that I've used when I'm an animator, and even though they're technical … they have a feeling of a Victorian era that whenever I look at them, I've always really enjoyed the artistic quality of it.