It’s been a bumpy three weeks on the buses as riders have absorbed the delays, crowding and general confusion wrought by that $20 million hit to service, and efforts to sell the changes to the public may have actually made things worse.

The spin was heavy from the beginning. When OC Transpo introduced the route cuts earlier this year, they were careful to call them anything but cuts. Instead of such potentially upsetting (and accurate) terminology, we got weasel-speak like “network optimization.”

To underscore the necessity of pruning nearly 100 routes, the city made dire projections that transit, already the second most expensive item on property tax bills after schools, would eat an ever-growing share of the budget. Without these cuts – sorry, optimizations – OC Transpo alone, we were told, would require a five per cent hike in taxes, or $145 million, by 2016.

But while assured these measures were absolutely vital, we were also told that 93 per cent of riders wouldn’t notice the difference. 

I don’t know about you, but I noticed on Day 1, when instead of catching my bus in the downtown core, I had to hike to the Rideau Centre. No big deal, I thought. Somebody’s got to be in that unlucky seven per cent.

But judging from the volume of complaints reported by city councillors from their constituents since the schedules changed, either we seven percenters are a very vocal group of transit riders or that number was a little overcooked.

If so few people were likely to be inconvenienced, after all, OC Transpo’s “Check Your Route” campaign, complete with recorded messages on the buses warning us of major changes, supposedly directed at a mere seven per cent of ridership, would hardly have been needed.

To Transpo’s credit, they’ve listened to the complaints, and plan to reverse some of the more boneheaded cuts, notably the 106 service to the Ottawa Hospital’s General Campus. Less to their credit, however, they didn’t anticipate that cutting bus service to a hospital might cause big problems for people who already have enough to worry about.

While this willingness to admit and correct error is encouraging, more honest communication from the beginning could have helped us avoid some of the current frustration. Telling riders that 93 per cent of them weren’t going to be affected by the biggest schedule shakeup in Transpo’s history raised expectations that couldn’t be met.