Introduction
On 12 June, 2025, Transit Committee met for the fourth time this year. You can find the meeting video here.
This meeting was presentation heavy, and as such, this update is a little longer than usual as well.
As usual, councilors talked a range of questions, some good, many bad. But as long as the good questions are simply one time questions and not part of a clear headed strategy to reform and rehaul OC Transpo operations and management, we won't see any progress on a better transit system.
Stage 2 talk has been quarantined into its own article again, which should be up in a day or two.
This meeting's document list, with everything in PDF format:
- OC Transpo Update
- Response to Westboro Collision Coroner's Inquest
- Verdict of Inquest Jury
- Action Plan to address the Inquest recommendations directed to the City of Ottawa
- OC Transpo's Non-Fare Revenue Strategy
- Stage 2 Light Rail Transit Report
Renée Amilcar
Timestamp at 2:35.
At the beginning of June, Renee Amilcar announced she would be leaving OC Transpo this month. Glen Gower gave some self-congratulatory remarks on her tenure, and then turned it over to staff to begin the update, Amilcar's final such presentation to Transit Committee.
As Troy Charter is becoming temporary GM of OC Transpo, Joel Lemieux will fill his place and become interim Director of Rail Operations.
Update
Since the last update:
- New Ways to Bus was launched. Amilcar says it went "extremely well," but also repeats claims of the biggest service change in OC Transpo history and improving reliability.
- OC Transpo has begun posting KPIs on their website (again).
- OC Transpo had its employee recognition month in June.
- During Doors Open Ottawa, OC Transpo opened Trim Station for public view.
During the fare-free weekend on 3/4 May, the O-Train system saw elevated ridership of 54%, totaling 136000 riders on the train system and 3000 Para-Transpo riders. Happy Goat Coffee, which operates the concessions on Line 1, gave out 1500 free drinks. No word on the number of bus riders that weekend.
Amilcar presented OC Transpo's achievements for the entire year, including those that have yet to come. Of note, they are preparing a technical briefing on the mitigation measures on Line 1 relating to challenges with the bearing assemblies. There is also behind-the-scenes work on the TMP; and the transit long-range financial plan is to be presented in the fall.
Issues with stations are reported to the Transit Operations Control Centre (TOCC) for tracking and for work orders. On-the-ground reviews are conducted by rail controllers to check compliance with RTG's project agreement.
Staff specified that salt is cleaned off the platforms between weather events, with some remaining to be reused: "[we] make sure that it doesn't collect to become a tripping hazard." The winter salt and sand on the system has been removed, OC Transpo says, nevermind that the presentation was in June and saying those words out loud is an admission of failure.
Behind these additional measures lay questions about OC Transpo's contractual relationship. The "enhanced station cleanliness oversight" implies (fine, we already know about) a falling out with RTG and makes me question what kind of state we should expect our Line 1 stations to be in 2048 when they are handed back at the end of the 30 year concession.
Leaks in the downtown tunnel have abated following last year's shutdown. Parliament station, which is the most heavily impacted by the leaks, has been cleaned and the artwork restored with a few missing panels to ensure easy roof access.
The RTG maintenance program is underway. Service impacts in June had been reduced from fourteen days to six days, reducing closures on the line. Bus fleet challenges were also considered in their plan, according to OC Transpo.
Stage 2 work is being completed in conjunction with the maintenance closures. You can see some components of the work below:
OC Transpo noted that additional service shutdowns ("adjustments") would be required this summer, which has appeared as three days of R1 this month, including a morning shutdown as I write this segment.
Timestamp at 36:35.
OC Transpo's chief safety officer, Sabrina Pasian, presented safety KPIs. You can see them below:
The top "employee occurrences" are the same as usual: motor vehicles, slip and trip, and stressful/traumatic events.
OC Transpo continues its fare compliance program. The number of tickets given out so far this year exceeds 2024's monthly average by 50%.
$177,000 in ticket revenue has been collected since January. However, it is not stated what the fare evasion rate is, nor how much extra revenue they except from (former) fare evaders paying. It is also not clear whether the "intangible benefits" are real or not. This comes back around to the lack of comprehensive strategy at OC Transpo; decisions are seemingly made with vibes, rather than actual knowledge and data. OC Transpo is not a small organization, and this is not the correct way to address actual problems.
The top locations for fines were Hurdman, Rideau, and St. Laurent; the top ten locations are shown in the slide above. OC Transpo said that this is "the area where we're seeing fare evasion" - more likely in my opinion, this is an example of the streetlight effect, where it is easier and more efficient to catch people fare evading at busy stations, so enforcement clusters there, rather than on buses (which I suspect is where the most fare evasion and revenue loss occurs).
Good news, Riley Brockington is pushing for this data to be collected and presented. I wish him luck.
Marty Carr also asked about the physical layout of Hurdman encouraging fare evasion; staff responded that they will "eventually" look at the physical configuration of stations.
With respect to other KPIs, 12-month ridership on the network is 69.0 million, compared to the full 2024 ridership of 67.9 million - I think it is safe to say that ridership growth has slowed, and we can no longer rely on "pre-pandemic recovery" for fare revenue or any other kind of revenue. March ridership was 6.6 million and April ridership was 5.9 million.
In response to a query from Brockington, staff said ridership on the O-Train is at 66% of pre-pandemic levels; the figure for the bus network is 85%.
They also reported service reliability, with their usual useless axis labelling. Bus service delivery was 98.0% in May and 97.2% in April. In other words, the cancellation rate was 2.0% in May and 2.8% in March, multiple times their target of 0.5% - framing matters.
"Regularity," which I am told is a 40% allowance for headways, was 82%; punctuality for less frequent routes was 70%. You can see the trends and the 12-month average below.
The routes with the lowest service delivery were the 6 (7.0% cancellations), the 14 (6.2% not delivered), and the 12 (5.9% cancelled). Work is ongoing to improve their reliability.
It is difficult to determine how OC Transpo calculates the breakdown of cancelled trips, and one wonders how much of this is due to underscheduling and similar factors, ones which are not discussed by staff during meetings.
O-Train reliability was presented as well. Notably, Line 1 service delivery was higher than Lines 2/4.
Para Transpo statistics can be seen here. I am not a user, so I cannot say if these are an accurate reflection of service:
Finally, riders who use the Transit app are presented with an option to provide feedback to OC Transpo. The feedback history can be found below - 87% of users gave their trip a five or four star review.
Service Reliability Corridor Review: Route 11
Timestamp at 54:30.
Copying yours truly, heh, OC Transpo presented a detailed analysis of Route 11's reliability and possible transit priority measures.
I would like to remind readers of the 2013 TMP's promise to add transit priority, which never materialized, and the new TMP's plan to allocate $8 million a year for transit priority measures - they say "trust but verify," and the City has failed its verification check.
Transit priority measures under consideration can be seen above.
OC Transpo has more detailed route performance than I can collect, and some of it is presented below. However, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Notably, the cancellation rate in May is listed as 2.2% here, whereas my collected figures say 2.9%; revenue-service hours has a good chance of being squirrel language for, "we delivered half a trip" (useless to more than half of riders).
OC Transpo also explained travel time variability, the biggest factor in keeping buses on-time. Unlike myself, OC Transpo has the resources to collect this data (I hope they didn't break their computers) and over the entire day, rather than an average for the peak periods.
The presented data matches my minimal data collection, though the variability is a little smaller than what I think it actually is (I suspect the PM peak variability for their 20-80 band is closer to 25 minutes).
Note that their data shows fall 2024 - is there no data for May 2025? This analysis needs to compare over the same time period, not different ones, or it becomes potentially misleading and certainly worthless.
Their claim that congestion causes delays is only a partial explanation. High travel times are caused by many factors, of which congestion is only one; bunching, asthe lead bus runs further and further behind schedule; poor service design, including stop spacing, location, excessive turns; and something as simple as the difference from Tuesday passenger loads and Friday passenger loads at peak can impact travel times.
You may notice that missing from all this talk, even if OC is finally asking for transit priority, is their own scheduling practices. We all think OC Transpo is the normal (or even better, that we've reinvented the wheel! Wheeee!) and that it shouldn't be questioned, when in fact, scheduling practice is the biggest barrier to reliability.
That push can only come internally or from unified advocacy. The former won't happen, so it will have to be the latter.
You may read the above map on your own. Note that it does not indicate the biggest delay points (which can be seen with any string diagram), which would tell us where the best value-for-money projects are. This is simply a project wishlist with no public-facing transparency on where the actual problem spots are, nor any way to hold OC Transpo accountable for service delivery results.
Astute councilors should be asking: how much time do each of these projects save (or in combination, if they are implemented in batches)? What are the biggest chokepoints, and are we addressing those?
During question time, Wilson Lo asked about the possibility of eliminating some deviations. Staff said they would look at removing both the Tunney's Pasture connection (a problem segment - see? It's that easy!) and Lincoln Fields after the opening of Stage 2 West.
One more note. OC Transpo's "every minute matters" is true under the current scheduling regime, but in a normal scheduling system, a route as long as the 11 could certainly absorb one or two minutes of runtime adjustment without any change in spending. Only big time savings (dependent on route, but about five minutes of consistent savings in each direction) would enable a bus to be taken off the route, but that is a massive savings.
We can only conclude that bad thinking is entrenched at OC Transpo.
Electric Buses and Bus Acquisition
Timestamp at 1:07:30.
At the top of the news today, OC Transpo has purchased eleven used diesel buses from Kitchener-Waterloo's transit agency, GRT (Grand River Transit). At meeting time, three buses were in Ottawa, two were in transit, and six were in KW. These buses are 40-ft Nova Bus units purchased by GRT in 2009 and 2010. See their schedule for entering service below:
The schedule for bus deliveries into 2027 can be seen below. In addition to the GRT purchase, we are also buying fifty new diesel articulated buses from New Flyer as part of Metrolinx joint procurement, to be delivered starting Q2 of next year. The e-bus schedule can also be seen below. Finally, 92 minibuses will be delivered; 82 for Para Transpo and 10 for on-demand buses.
Charging equipment has been ordered, and the design tender has been issued. Construction at St. Laurent South Garage is expected to begin next month.
Staff training for electric buses continues.
Staff training for electric buses continues.
Work is ongoing at St. Laurent Garage. North Garage is partly closed, with space for only 20 buses; the buses have been sent to Merivale/Pinecrest, and to the South and West Garages at St. Laurent. As part of the next phase of work, both the West Garage and South Garage will be closed; West, which is currently open-air, will be getting a shiny newgarage building. During this phase, many buses and staff will move to Industrial, Merivale, and Pinecrest garages.
Merivale Garage is also getting an expansion. The property west of the current garage, 170 Colonnade, was purchased in 2023. The former conference centre will become office space and a backup Transit Operations Control Centre (TOCC), and its parking lot converted to space for minibuses (ie. Para Transpo and on-demand).
The fleet continues to age with no end to time in sight; we are also beginning to retire the articulated buses and the end-of-life Inveros. Meanwhile, Para Transpo vehicles are being decommissioned at a 1:1 ratio as minibus deliveries arrive.
During summer, the fleet requirement drops from 540 to 460, and resources are diverted to longer, more resource intensive fixes. Looking ahead, refurbishment programs are being planned for the double deckers and the Nova Bus fleet, and OC Transpo is searching for trained mechanics with a recruitment agency.
OC Transpo is also planning technology upgrades. See them below:
The Westboro Crash Inquest
Timestamp at 3:50:15.
Related documents have been linked at the top of this page.
In the afternoon of 11 January, 2019, a double decker bus crashed into the platform at Westboro Station; in particular, the upper deck of the double deckers are level with the canopy, which penetrated into the bus. Three people were killed, all of them sitting on the upper level of the bus.
The inquest was held earlier this year, and concluded with sixty recommendations. Forty-one are directed at the City and nineteen are directed at other parties.
According to Sabrina Pasian, four have been completed, and "several more" are "well underway." There are three major categories: policies, practices and procedures; recommendations with minor budgetary pressures; and recommendations with major budgetary pressures. With this, we understand how our municipal government sees everything: not with the lens of providing the best service at the lowest cost, but with "budgetary pressures."
There will be a more detailed report on the inquest recommendations in Q3.
Confusingly, during the presentation, staff talked about eight major planks, being guiding principles, driver assistance technology, infrastructure, safety data collection and analysis, safety oversight, training, funding, and recommendations assigned to not our problem ... sorry, recommendations assigned to non-City stakeholders. These are mostly what they sound like; the actual recommendations themselves can be found at the top of this article in the documents section.
You can see staff's next steps below.
Jeff Leiper said that staff should be courageous in asking Council for the money needed to make the recommendations happen, and that there should be no micromanagement, both of which should be applied not only to safety but to every aspect of transit management.
And in response to a question from Glen Gower, staff said that they are communicating with other levels of government and organizational bodies on the inquest recommendations.
The Non-Fare Revenue (non-)Strategy
The timestamp is 4:11:20; the presentation was skipped due to time constraints on the meeting.
A reminder of what we are talking about.
According to staff's report, ads on buses, in stations, and on the Transitway generated $1.95 million last year. Additionally, shelter ads generated $2.5 million, for a total non-fare revenue of $4.45 million.
Last December, City Council directed staff to increase this figure by 10% this year and 10% next year for a total increase of 21% over two years, or $934,500. To put that in perspective, that's about 5% of the value of the magical increased revenue from higher ridership (which hasn't materialized) or 2.6% of the hole Council left in the budget that hasn't been filled.
Deep breath.
After consulting consultants (sigh), staff put together a priority list for this revenue. In the first tranche, are an advertising/sponsorship RFP and digital screens; "improved" bus shelter advertising; expansion of billboard ads; vending and pouring (ie. exclusivity) rights; and an expansion of the retail program, including temporary retail. The second tranche includes parcel delivery and locker storage, a facility rental program, and a review of rates of the bus charter program. The final tranche consists of a park and ride lot rental program, and merchandizing.
Now, some of these opportunities are good for bringing eyes into the station and to provide passenger amenities. Storage lockers, for instance, would be extremely convenient for visitors; more retail would be more successful, I suspect, with our longer headways, and such programs would be even more successful if located outside of the fare paid zone, or with access from both sides.
However, OC Transpo is facing structural problems right now. It looks increasingly likely that we are going to run out of money this year or next and council's priority is to find under a million dollars from retail and merchandise sales?
As a amenity program, these are (mostly) worthy programs that improve the passenger experience - I, for one, read the ads when I'm bored, waiting for an infrequent train. As a revenue generation tool, the dollars generated are not even worth the staff time thinking about it and setting up the programs.
Let's not kid ourselves. OC Transpo's problems are not for a lack of less than one million dollars. It is the fundamental way the agency is governed, managed, and operated. When Council passes motions like these, staff talk about the importance of a "dedicated team," and then councilors like Steve Desroches talk about more advertising, it creates the impression of a complete circus at every level. Seemingly, nobody believes that we should be talking about the problems, that our problems are at least partly our own fault, or even that there are problems at all.
The Non-Fare Revenue Strategy only serves to show that there is no strategy at any level. When all this retail talk is settled, we'll find that nobody has been minding the store at OC Transpo.
Motions and Inquiries
Timestamp at 5:21:00.
Three motions were introduced, all by either Wilson Lo or David Hill.
The first relates to the donation of a bus for heritage purposes.
The second is to direct OC Transpo to either introduce service or remove the UTA designation from Heart's Desire and Rideau Glen, both of which are located in Barrhaven. A historical tangent, OC Transpo used to set a target for UTA (the Urban Transit Area, that is, the parts of the City that are taxed for transit service) service; 95% of residents should be within 400 metres of bus service during peak periods and 800 metres of bus service during the off-peak. In lieu of bending to residents' demands, councilors should seek to receive a reconfirmation or update to this policy, and if they desire, direct OC Transpo to introduce a new guideline, rather than ad-hoc changes.
With this motion, we betray yet again a lack of strategic thinking to reform OC Transpo.
The third directs staff to review the transfer window for single fares, which are currently set between 90 and 105 minutes depending on time of day. While this is a good idea in theory, in practice, the motion refers to Barrhaven residents, when a review needs to be comprehensive in scope.
Wilson Lo also inquired staff on the service plan, bus hour savings, and plan for those savings with the opening of Stage 2 East. This, at least, shows some big picture thinking and demonstrates some strategic interest in OC Transpo operations and procedures overall.
Sean Devine, through Steve Desroches, asked about Para Transpo processes for review and assignment of vehicle type to passengers. Though I cannot speak for the issue first-hand, there is clearly a large body of passengers who believe this to be an essential issue.
Miscellaneous
This section collects all the talk and updates that don't fit neatly into other categories.
OC Transpo is adjusting Lines 1 and 2/4 start times to be the same, something which is expected to begin in the September service change. This means all rail lines would start at 0500 on weekdays and 0600 on Saturdays.
Jessica Bradley asked about missing passengers from survey data with regards to New Ways to Bus, especially those who may have switched away from transit; in a follow-up, she asked for a summary of feedback on New Ways to Bus - an astute question. In response, staff said that feedback is being collected and improvements are planned in September within the budget envelope; as for transparency, they said that they have not yet determined the best way to do so.
She also said "I hope that there will be a meaningful opportunity to talk about what works and what's not working, and if that requires a greater budget envelope that we're willing to have that discussion as we go into the 2026 budget." (emphasis mine)
In response to OC Transpo's crowing about New Ways to Bus, Riley Brockington asked how OC Transpo defined a successful service change. Amilcar's response was noncommittal. (hint: the correct answer is "ridership has increased.") He followed up by pressing OC Transpo's planning department for their lack of transparency on feedback.
Brockington also asked for information on the number of riders attracted by early service on the LRT during the Ottawa Race Weekend.
Wilson Lo asked about the applicability of the 98% service delivery "headline statistic" to all periods, referring to an informal survey he and Barrhaven West councillor David Hill conducted at Fallowfield. OC Transpo responded with boilerplate about monitoring reliability and bus replacements, which still doesn't address the issues (inadequate gap management and poor scheduling practices). He also asked, but did not press hard on, his apparent peeve of underscheduling of the 70.
Tim Tierney asked about provincial funding for more safety on OC Transpo. According to staff, it is a multi-year deal, so recruitment for special constables is ongoing.
Jeff Leiper asked for the usage of the park and rides on the southern end of Line 2. OC said that Bowesville is doing well, Leitrim less so; in the fall, they will collect data on whether riders have shifted from the Barrhaven PNRs or not.
Theresa Kavanagh asked about the measures OC Transpo is taking to coordinate with other departments to implement transit priority. Staff said they were coordinating with other departments ... which I suppose is true, but not very helpful as an answer.
She also asked about Para Transpo's use of taxis shuttles (see Devine's inquiry). I cannot speak to this myself, but this is a topic worth investigating for a larger outlet. Staff talked about operating Para Transpo with multiple types of vehicles, which is dodging the question yet again - this one in particular comes up often.
Thoughts
Transit Committee meetings usually leave me with a headache, and this meeting is no exception.
Councilors continue to chase small dollars and attempt to micromanage the transit system. That is what staff are for - and they should be proactive in searching for improvements. Transit Committee is around to exercise oversight, provide direction, and if needed, make far reaching reforms. Instead, we get petty squabbles while public transit fails before our eyes.
In talking about $900,000 of fare revenue and $170,000 of ticket revenue and adjusting the UTA for a single community and asking for flagging policy with regards to one rider (an enormous tangent I did not feel was relevant to this article), our councilors have completely missed the mark. If Transit Committee does not do its primary job of providing overall guidance and direction to staff, we may as well disband the committee and achieve all of the same results. And that's what we'll get when we keep on trucking with the mediocre status quo - the same mediocre results.
Until next time.
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