It's the start of the month, so I've been out and about using my shiny new bus pass. For those who are curious - you can indeed buy a monthly bus pass after the start of the month, but the price doesn't come down, at all. Which seems odd to me, but what do I know?
What I've discovered is that Ottawa is riddled with bus Transitways - they're streets set aside specifically for buses. Sometimes, it's a couple of lanes of a regular highway, using concrete dividers to make the point; but more commonly, it's an entire separate road system, set aside just for buses. If you want to get from one side of the city to the other, find the nearest Transitway station, and pop on a bus - you don't get traffic, and the stations are a couple of miles apart, so it's a lot faster; faster even than driving, I suspect.
I don't know if the Transitway system is new since I was here in 1991-2, or if I just didn't notice it then - knowing me, either eventuality is equally likely - but boy, I'm impressed. It's just the sort of thing that would make getting the bus around Manchester considerably easier; and the sort of thing that couldn't be done, because there's either no space, or not enough money to build the whole thing underground.
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