Transit Committee - 17 March, 2025

On the 17th of March, a Monday, Transit Committee met for the second meeting of the year. Video link. Meeting begins at 16:50. 

Routine Update

Renée Amilcar was unavailable, and the regular was presented by Bart Cormier, Director of Strategic Communications and External Relations at OC Transpo. 

The presentation started with an acknowledgement of Transit Operator and Worker Appreciation Day, and the mandatory photo-op. If you wish to skip these, start at 34:55. 

Sunday service began on Lines 2/4 on the 16th of March, the day before the meeting. According to the slides, "significant progress" was made on system elements since the launch of revenue service in January. 

Para Transpo began offering phone notifications on the 17th of March, the same day as the meeting. Para Transpo Talk continues to run, with sessions occurring on the 13th and 16th of February. There was no reporting on the volume of feedback received, except on very vague terms. 

If you remember, there were two storms on the 13th and 16th of February. The two dumped 70 cm onto the city, creating challenges for service delivery, including bus and rail operations. There were challenges with snow clearing on the Hurdman bridge, with some single-tracking during the morning of the 13th. 

Next steps can be found on this slide: 

The bus maintenance action plan is in motion - or not. (timestamp 46:55) There has been a growing backlog of maintenance, and OC Transpo has been struggling with "limited resources" (which resources? Money? People? Time? All of the above?). They are seeing 150 defects a day, not helped by the impossible-to-predict aging of the fleet. 

Resources have been devoted to short-term maintenance that can be done quickly, with a large workload of long-term fixes that have been left to sit by the side to ensure higher bus availability tomorrow. 

Five buses were decommissioned as "the repairs required to meet the safety standards were too costly or too significant to be worthwhile." This should make you feel good about the state of our transit system. 

More buses may be decommissioned in the spring, before the E-Bus deliveries arrive (see last month's Transit Committee meeting for the timeline). This will put more work onto the good buses, aging them prematurely. 

You have City Council to thank, or blame, for this. I ranted about this last month: 

The reliability of the fleet continues to deteriorate as the buses age. Unfortunately, the passage of time was impossible to predict, and we could not have procured buses in the early 2020s at a lower price, to replace our aging fleet.

Spring maintenance should reduce short-term problems, allowing OC Transpo to work on the sidelined buses. OC Transpo still wishes to procure used buses to replace their fleet. However, the upcoming closure of St. Laurent Garage will not help in maintenance. 

OC Transpo is working on hiring more mechanics. 

Cormier talked about OC Transpo's 99.5% service delivery goal, and how they began measuring cancellation figures to meet that target. No cancellation figures were presented in this meeting. Conspiratorially, my very limited tracking shows very high cancellation figures for February; OC may not want to look bad in front of City Council. 

Cormier then went on a tangent about how OC Transpo is unreliable for reasons out of their control, even on bus routes with little traffic. In reality, OC Transpo's practices, including short scheduled runtimes, interlining (I plan to write about this after New Ways to Bus comes into effect), stop spacing, and their on-off hiring, all have detrimental effects on reliability. But it's easier to wash their hands of responsibility rather than delivering good transit service. 

OC Transpo brags about transparency and long-term plans, but we never see these plans. We don't have real transparency - they hide behind (likely false) KPIs that show system-wide averages that don't reflect the actual experience of the rider. Long-term plans are not publicly available, or they don't exist - I suspect the latter. They never deliver actual plans, but only pretty words. 

All the meanwhile, their own ratings (more on this soon) show low customer satisfaction. No wonder ridership is stagnating, when all management can do is point fingers elsewhere. 

At timestamp 53:45, they bragged that they would "normally" present their own KPIs, but they had "special" performance indicators "based on their participation in international industry." They help to understand what OC Transpo is not doing well on. Management said they are not for directly comparing to other cities with good transit service, because that would make OC Transpo look bad. 

In April and May of 2024, OC Transpo conducted a survey with 2000 responses; the results only took ten months to release to the public. Satisfaction has improved from 2023 overall. 

To nobody's surprise, OC Transpo's lowest scores were trip speed, frequency, reliability, and information on alternate routes (likely because the alternate routes were cut ... I mean, adjusted, to find "savings"). 

Just the important parts of a transit network, moving people from place to place. Who needs reliability anyways? 

Of the cities we compared ourselves to, reliability, route network, journey time, and frequency were among the worst metrics, with Ottawans being the least satisfied with the first three of any city in the comparison. 

OC Transpo does have high scores in some areas, such as "resolving problems" and "staff helpfulness." Unfortunately, people cannot arrive at their destination with "environmental performance" or "moving inside the bus." 

OC Transpo's bus service received a score of 2.38/5 overall. This is an improvement from 1.76 in 2023. 

Rail service was rated as well. they found that "resolving problems," "interchange," "convenient network," and "alternate information" were among the worst in the group. 

The overall score was 3.03/5, up from 2.34 in 2023 (which included a three-week shutdown during the summer). 

More information is always available in the slide deck, as well as the video. 

New Ways to Bus

Timestamp at 1:02:10. 

New Ways to Bus will begin service on the 27th of April. 

In the coming weeks, OC Transpo will begin circulating a "consolidated reference" to the changes in New Ways to Bus. These may not include frequency changes, as I've documented in the ridership analysis pieces.  

They presented a non-comprehensive list of changes to the network since November 2023's initial proposal release. 

The marketing campaign is in its third phase, "Action." You can see the details in the slides below. 

Bus flags will be unveiled starting about mid-April. Brochures information will be posted in advance of the route change. 

Two Lonely Delegations ... 

In contrast to the November meeting craziness, there were two delegations this time around. 

The first brought up safety problems with the Para Transpo taxi service. I am not well-versed in Para Transpo service, and OC Transpo refuses to release a consultation summary of the Para Transpo Talk (remember that?), so I do not know how widespread of an issue is this. But it is revealing in how OC Transpo deals with user input, which disappears into a file and is never seen again. 

The second asked about cleanliness at rail stations. 

Fare Enforcement

This section begins, in the video, at 3:12:30. 

During the Fare Compliance Initiative, OC Transpo hired eight temporary fare inspectors in addition to four permanent inspectors, all of whom are former operators on the network. (and when we are having a shortage too ...) 

OC Transpo said that they are seeing increased fare evasion, like other Canadian cities; they also cited an increased uniformed presence on the transit network, which "contributes to transit users' overall safety and feeling of safety." Fare enforcement officers, they said, also acts as a deterrent to fare evaders, and can provide customer service for people on the transit system. 

Enforcement officers issued a total of 4,309 tickets and 89 warnings last year. Of these, 2,660 tickets and 55 warnings were on the rail network, 1,335 tickets and 30 warnings were at bus stations, and 314 tickets and 4 warnings were on buses running on-street. 

This shows a bias towards transit stations, rather than transit vehicles, even though other agencies, such as the TTC, find that buses have a higher rate of fare evasion than rail stations, and reduces (or does not augment) visible presence on bus routes. 

1,143 tickets and 23 warnings were issued in January and February of this year, with an increased percentage at rail stations compared to last year. 

The Fare Compliance Initiative will be made permanent, with staff making adjustments to the program as needed. 

Stage 2 Updates

This section will be presented in a second part to the article, coming soon. 

Miscellaneous 

This section gathers random tidbits of information that are worth noting, but do not belong in any other category. 

The goal of 76 diesel rail operators, for Lines 2/4, is targeted at the end of June. This isn't a surprise, but it is a disappointment. 

The city anticipates a minor delay on the delivery of electric buses. 18 will, if I interpret staff correctly, be in service by the end of this month, with 4-6 more coming in April and the rest being after. Originally, 26 were to be in service by the end of March and Q1. 

Shawn Menard continues to push for a return to five minute service in the off-peak. He also lamented the state of OC Transpo's service planning, which is reactive and demand-based, rather than offering an attractive service that could improve ridership. 

Thoughts

Another update-heavy meeting, but just as always, things sliiip through the cracks and reveal themselves to us, the observers. 

To my eyes, OC Transpo continues to plod along, with no alarm from either City Council or management about a looming fiscal gap next year that will need to be filled (or a gap this year which has not been filled). 

OC Transpo is not being mismanaged, but it is not being managed either - it's just the status quo. 

I'll write up the Stage 2 update soon, and then a route snapshot hopefully next week. Until next time.