There’s no way around it now: one way or another, Ottawans are going to remember Rick Leary’s name.
My original hope when it was announced that he was
taking over the steering wheel
at OC Transpo was that the former TTC boss might slip quietly into town,
make everything run properly,
and we’d never have to learn who he was.
After all, the only reason Ottawa residents came to know the names John Manconi, Renée Amilcar and Troy Charter is because they were in charge when things didn’t work — when, one by one, they found themselves in front of cameras and microphones at too many press conferences and technical briefings, insisting for the umpteenth time that customer safety was Job One, as opposed to, you know, having public transit that worked.
If everyone in town knows who you are, it usually means something has gone wrong.
And now this.
The ink on Leary’s new business cards isn’t even dry and already the LRT has delivered yet another reminder of how difficult it is to make lemonade when the lemons you’ve bought are really bad.
Whatever we thought was fixed isn’t. New damage has been discovered in the train assemblies — serious enough that officials considered shutting the entire system down.
So we’re not in a complete shutdown. Instead, we’re in some grey Twilight Zone version of Groundhog Day, repeatedly just one problem away from the next problem, and despite being told things are moving forward, always feeling a few stops shy of our destination.
None of this, of course, is Leary’s doing. He didn’t design the system. He didn’t build the trains. He didn’t lay the track. Heck, he just got into town. But he signed up for this, and now he owns it — every bit of it.
Because while the rails can be fixed, the wires restrung and the bushings rebushed, the bigger job for Leary will be repairing the trust that has broken down more often than the trains.
We’ve been told, over and over again, that the problems have been identified, that the fixes are in place, and that things will improve. Yet each new issue — the latest involving the cartridge bearing assemblies — increasingly suggests that more remain unresolved.
We’re no longer surprised by failures. We’re surprised when there aren’t any. What’s that expression? Once burned, twice shy? We’re so far past that now we barely flinch anymore. And when people stop reacting to LRT’s failures, when dysfunction becomes the default expectation, that’s the damage that is hardest to repair.
Ottawa’s light-rail system isn’t just unreliable. It’s civic theatre, and the reviews have been brutal. Riders swap stories about planning their morning commute like a winter military operation, or joke — or not — about trading their Presto card for a Prius.
Fixing the mechanics of this white elephant is one thing — perhaps a complete shutdown is what’s needed. But fixing LRT’s reputation is something else entirely.
The good news, Rick Leary, is that you and OC Transpo don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Other organizations faced similar moments, when their products became punchlines, and found their way through. Domino’s admitted their pizza wasn’t good and showed customers how it was changing. Old Spice leaned into the joke and somehow came out of it smelling good.
In both cases, candour became the rebrand.
That may be the lesson worth borrowing here. Many Ottawans rely on public transit — they don’t have other options. And for the past however-many years — I’ve lost track of how long it’s been since Jim Watson’s “on time and on budget” was the mantra-of-the-day — they’ve had their lives upended by its failures. People don’t want empty reassurances or slogans. No more rounds of “nothing is more important than safety” when it isn’t tied to reliability that people can see and measure. Be open with the public, in plain English (and French). As every math teacher says, show your work. Set deadlines and meet them.
Because when the system (fingers crossed) finally runs properly, it won’t be judged solely on whether it works, but on how long people wait before trusting it again.
If you can get there, then yes, Ottawans might remember Rick Leary for all the right reasons.
Welcome aboard.
