Two days after Ottawa was hit with a major 50 cm snowstorm the bus system still doesn’t appear to be back to normal.

Thursday afternoon buses were traveling through the downtown core were 45 minutes behind schedule. Supposedly that was due to high traffic volumes, which struck me as a strange excuse given that most buses that go through the downtown use bus-only lanes.

Then again, maybe there was more traffic than normal. Given that it took transit users as much as four hours to get home on Tuesday, I suppose it is possible that large numbers of people abandoned the idea of taking the bus in favour of bringing their cars to work.

The Transit authority said the Tuesday congestion was due in a large part to civil servants being sent home from work early and OC Transpo not being warned so they could start the rush hour buses early. That may be true, however that wouldn’t affect the fact that their articulated buses were getting stuck in the snow. I do know that the articulated bus that got stuck around the corner from my house Tuesday afternoon was still there Wednesday morning. At one point another bus had gotten stuck trying to go around it, but they managed to get it going again on Tuesday.

I do have one burning question though: Why is it that if only one bus in the city is going to break down, it is always the one that I am on?