Think you can leave the car at the entrance to the airport for a few minutes while you pick up your friend? You might find yourself regretting it once you come back out – just ask the 1,583 people who ended up with a parking ticket at Ottawa MacDonald-Cartier International Airport last year. It looks like there will be even more this year, too. In the first six months of 2016, over four hundred more parking tickets were issued outside the airport than in the first half of 2015.

What’s the issue with people parking outside the airport entrance for a few minutes? “The parkway is constructed as a perfect loop, so if people start to park on the inside lane then we have people double and triple parking,” a representative of Ottawa Airport’s parking office said. “That clogs up the lanes, therefore we have people that are honking, we have people walking through traffic. That becomes dangerous.”

Charlotta Lundahl, a Swedish student who used the airport, said, “It actually looked pretty dangerous. I could see people walking around cars, and there were some with kids. I’m glad I was just using a taxi.”

Explore the graphs below to find out more. You can hover your mouse over them to get more information.

Ottawa MacDonald-Cartier International Airport. Copyright The Ottawa Citizen.

Red Oak Retirement Residence had 445 violations last year, the highest of any Ottawa facility.

Last year was a bad time to be in a retirement home. Health and safety violations have doubled in the past five years, marking 2015 as the worst year yet, according to the City of Ottawa.

The violations included improper preparation of food, high acid content in drinking water and improper handling of chemicals.

Municipal and provincial inspections identified a total of 1276 violations at Ottawa’s 80 homes last year alone.

Inspections are required by the Retirement Homes Act a minimum of every three years. The act, passed in 2010, ensures cleanliness standards and care of residents in the 700 retirement facilities in Ontario.

Inspections are usually triggered by tenant complaints.

“If we receive a complaint we will conduct a follow-up,” said Michael Jacoby, a spokesperson for the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority. “If we find the Act is not being followed, we have the authority to revoke licenses.”

Each home must apply for a license to qualify to house a portion of the 40,000 Ontarian seniors currently living in retirement facilities.

Ottawa Public Health shares responsibility with the RHRA to conduct routine investigations and respond to complaints. The city requires a minimum of one inspection every four months, according to Eric Leclair at Ottawa Public Health.

“Most places are willing and eager to hear recommendations on how they can do better,” he added.

An aging Canadian population

The number of Canadians aged 65 or older reached about five million in 2011, according to Statistics Canada. Seniors are expected to outnumber children by next year and will comprise about 25 per cent of the population by 2036.

Less than 10 per cent of those aged 65-69 live in retirement residences, but that number jumps up to 26 per cent after they turn 85.

The booming rates of pensioners will soon need housing and despite the high numbers of violations, many have no other options than a retirement residence.

Living with loved ones isn’t always possible. If you tally up just the cost of nurses visits, suitable food and medication, amounts can quickly reach more than $5,000 per month. The average month’s rent at a retirement home is about $3,000.

Questions of cleanliness

Of all the retirement homes with infractions, one particular Ottawa dwelling surpassed the rest.

Red Oak Retirement Residence has had the highest number of failed inspections for almost five years straight, more than double the next highest home.

A third of those violations dealt with unsafe pH balances in the water. When the pH is off, the water can become acidic and leach metals from the pipe into the supply. The affected drinking water can cause seizures and hearing loss.

“Large industries often have more rigorous inspections,” explained Brian Bruni, general manager of Red Oak. “But I’m disappointed with even one infraction.”

Bruni said that all incidents of violations have been addressed, and that he accepts responsibility for the scrutiny the retirement industry is facing.

The water safety and the other misdemeanors Ottawa’s homes are guilty of violate the RHA, which states that tenants have the right to live in a clean and safe environment. Infractions can lead to fines, revoking of operation licenses and in extreme cases, prosecution.

But Jacoby said that legal action is rare.

“What I can say is that the majority of licensees are compliant with the Act,” he said.

While inspection violations have been dropping in 2016, many residences are continuing to show increasing numbers of failed inspections.

Complaints against taxis have been the highest they’ve ever been in the past two years, according to an analysis of data used by the City of Ottawa for 3-1-1 calls. The number of 3-1-1 calls to bylaw related to taxis increased from 662 in 2013 to 770 in 2015.

Ottawa taxi companies saw increased competition with the illegal arrival of Uber in October of 2014, which recently became the first officially licensed private transportation company in Ottawa after two years of illegal operations. For frequent cabbie passenger, Zach Whalen, the rise in complaints doesn’t come as a surprise.

“I’ve been in lots of rides with drivers who were talking on their cell phones – like holding their phones, not just a handset,” said Whalen. “Once a driver on his phone was so distracted pulling into the Queensway that he almost drove into a truck hauling a boat.

“The propellor hanging off the back was actually overtop of the hood. That’s how close we were.”

Of the wards in Ottawa, Somerset had the highest amount of taxi complaints to bylaw services in 2015, but Rideau-Vanier saw the most dramatic increase from 2014 to 2015. Between the two years alone, Rideau-Vanier saw a 40 percent increase in calls, from 87 to 122. For passengers like Whalen, the numbers could be higher if more people considered calling bylaw.

Whalen, himself, has never made a call.

“I should have a couple times,” he said. “But, mainly, I was just glad to get to my destination so I never called anybody in.”

For Ottawa resident Maxime Pigeon, it’s easier to scrutinize taxis than to scrutinize Uber.

“You regularly see them [taxis] fail to signal, roll their stops, cut people off and weave,” says Pigeon. “In their defence, Uber cars are not marked so one cannot notice bad Uber drivers.”

Ottawa cabbies, incidentally, are arguing that taxis are in fact safer than ride-sharing services like Uber, says Ottawa cabbie Watany Ben Jamil.

“With Uber you don’t have a camera in the car to make sure in case of harassment or abuse,” says Jamil. “Forget about the price, it’s the service. You have all the good features [with taxis]: camera, security and insurance. You are fully covered. What else does the customer want?”

The most current Vehicle for Hire By-law, which was enacted on Sept. 30, 2016, proposes that Uber vehicles do not require cameras, despite efforts by councillors to make them compulsory. Council will be re-visiting the issue of cameras in the fall of 2017. In the current bylaw, however, taxis must operate with a security camera.

Uber arrived in Ottawa in October of 2014 as an illegal ride-sharing service that wasn’t recognized under Ottawa bylaws. The same year, the number of bylaw taxi complaints declined from 662 in 2013 to a low of 592 in 2014. A change in the amount of complaints could be because of a number of factors, including an increase in Uber rides, says Dr. Tripat Gill, an expert on consumer behaviour at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University.

“Usually when there’s a new competitor you do compare the options,” says Gill. “In other product categories, like new smartphones that have many more features than the other one, then you may re-assess your attitude toward the other options. It could just be a matter of consequence of competition.”

Uber has earned significantly higher customer service ratings, according to studies done by the City of Ottawa in Oct. 2015. According to participants in the city’s Taxicab and Limousine Regulations and Service Review, participants rated their overall taxi experiences 3.9 on a scale of 10. That’s in contrast with Uber’s rating of 9.1. Customers reported taxi drivers as uncaring and spent more time on their phones.

The light complaints in Ward9 have more than doubled between 2014 and 2015, according to the 311 dataset from the open data website of the City of Ottawa.

In 2014, ward 9 received 77 light complaints, making it the 19^th ward out of 23 for the number of complaints received. However, 157 complaints were recorded in 2015, placing the ward in the 9^th position.

Keigh Egli, councilor of Ward9, says common complaints are traffic lights and light trespass. “There are too many files for us to go through to pinpoint exactly the reason of the increase”, he said.

Light trespass can come from neighbors outdoor lights as well as bad streetlights. According to Robert Dick, chair of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Light-Pollution Abatement Committee, light trespass is most often due to bad light fixtures and too intense lighting.

A number of bad light fixtures are present on the streets of Ward9, most of them in parking lots of stores, either their glare being too bright or the fixture pointing towards the sky.

Here is a map with pictures showing some bad light fixtures in Ward9.

Ottawa’s Strategic Plan to convert all its outdoor sodium lights for new LEDs before 2020 could, according to Dick, increase the light trespass complaints by a lot, but not for a long time.

Egli says if it is the case and light complaints increase, “we will deal with it then.”

Residential parking. It is a strategy everyone has tried, or at least everyone who dreads trading off a portion of their hard-earned paychecks for a few hours of safety from parking control. Instead they take their car, park by the curb on a residential street, and enjoy the feeling of beating the system.

But there’s a catch.

Parked more than three hours between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.? You can be ticketed for that. Fines generally run about $30 according to data from Ottawa’s open data website. Since 2011, over 169 thousand tickets have been written up for cars exceeding the three-hour limit. It is the sixth highest parking violation in Ottawa.

Some readers may be confused – in the suburbs, places like Kanata and Barrhaven, residential streets often have cars parked on the side of the road. Friends visiting, people with full garages, or even those too lazy to pull into the driveway. Still, they’re rarely ticketed – no Barrhaven streets appear in even the top 50 ticketed, along with only one Kanata street (Hearst).

The city’s parking data shows violations are far more likely to be noticed, and fined, on residential streets near areas where many people conglomerate. Prime examples are university and college campuses, along with the ByWard Market. The most ticketed area is on Bathgate Drive, between Den Haag Drive and Montreal Road. In the past five years, 1921 tickets have been issued along that stretch of road for people parked more than three hours.

One of the complaints Ottawa has seen about the bylaw before is the obscureness. Not everyone knows it exists, and some people assume because there is no signage, they are free to park.

Monterey Drive – The Outlier

For the most part, the top 25 ticketed streets regarding this violation are located in the downtown core, or at least nearby. One street, however, sticks out from the rest – Monterey Drive.

Located in Nepean, just off Baseline Road, Monterey saw the 23rd highest number of tickets over the past five years, totalling 900. Unlike the other streets in the top 25, it was not downtown. Nor was it located near a university or college or even a shopping area.

According to Monterey resident Simon Callsen, the reason is due to the residential setup of the street.

“I know a lot of people are aware that the bylaw exists, including myself, but we choose to ignore it because we have more vehicles than our building allows, so everyone in our building parks on the street,” said Callsen.

Monterey’s housing has residents living in connected houses with no street access by car – no driveways, and just a single spot in the communal garage per household, said Callsen.

Usually, in Ottawa, situations like that can be dealt with. The city offers residential on-street parking permits for $30 a month in the summer, $140 in the winter. Callsen said he would get one – if his street offered it.

“If there was a permit available I would buy that permit but there is not,” said Callsen after admitting to parking on the street. “There’s a lot of streets nearby that do have public permits available, but Monterey from some reason doesn’t.”

So with no other options, the citizens of Monterey have been forced to adapt.

“Occasionally Bylaw does come and mark tires, but we all have a system where we warn each other when someone sees Bylaw and we all move our cars,” said Callsen. “When the officers do come by, we’re all going to get an email and a phone call warning us.”

Since Uber’s arrival in Ottawa in October 2014, the city has seen backlash from Ottawa taxi companies and a series of protests from cab drivers. With taxi companies making it clear they are against the ride-sharing service, the numbers tell another story of what customers think about the services taxis are providing.

Coventry Connections, an Ottawa cab operator, declined to comment on the increase in taxi complaints in 2015.  Ottawa’s taxi union, Unifor 1688, was reached out to, but did not respond.

Complaints to the City of Ottawa about road surfaces have dropped over the last three years. But that could be a sign that things are improving or getting worse.
“The complaints are down, but the roads are nothing to write home about,” says Barry Wellar, a former professor of urban planning at the University of Ottawa. Wellar says that the most likely reason the complaints about road surfaces are down, is because nothing is being done about them. “If the public thought there was a hope in hell of getting something done they would be complaining,” he says.
According to Ottawa 311 call data from 2013 to 2015, overall complaints about road surfaces have dropped by 18 per cent. Only two wards, Beacon Hill-Cyrville and Barhaven have seen an increase in the number of complaints. Some wards such Alta Vista have seen complaints drop by as much as 33 per cent between 2013 and 2015.
“It is a very bad sign for the city of Ottawa,” Wellar says.

Road Surface Complaints to the City of Ottawa, 2013-2015
  Lighter areas mean a higher decrease in complaints. Click on a Ward for Numbers. Source: Ottawa 311 Data

City Councillor Bob Monette, who is also part of the city’s transportation committee, disagrees with Wellar’s assessment.
“It’s always easier to be negative about our progress but our city has undertaken many road projects to welcome the world to Ottawa for the 2017 celebrations,” he said in an email. As some of these projects reach completion he says that is “probably why we have relieved less complaints.”
Nat Birkenshaw lives in the Alta-Vista ward. He says that most of the smaller roads in his area are taken care of, “the neighbourhood roads are nice, definitely,” he says.
However he thinks major routes such as St Laurent Blvd. and Walkely Road need work, “the only area I can say I’m impressed with is the useless part of St. Laurent,” referring to the stretch that branches eastward, south of Walkley. The rest he says is covered in potholes and sewer covers that cause a bumpy ride.

Wellar does admit that in some areas a drop in complaints is likely due to improvements made to some roads. Stittsville has not only seen the lowest number of complaints but also has the lowest rate of complaints for every 100 people. Wellar says much of the road work in that area is new, and would result in fewer complaints.

Source: Ottawa 311 Data

But Wellar does not think that improvements for 2017 are largely related to a drop in complaints. He says a majority of the road work is focused on downtown, which is only a small portion of Ottawa’s road network, “They have roads all over the place. They have roads almost out to Merrickville.”
However perhaps the drop in complaints are a result of both road work and some apathetic constituents. Birkenshaw suggests that small issues relating to road surfaces are not much to fuss about. While the potholes and sewers are a nuisance, these issues have never motivated Birkensahw to complain to the city, “I feel like they’re pretty on top of fixing major road issues,” he says. As for the smaller issues “I feel like they will just get dealt with eventually anyway.”