Introduction
On 11 September, 2025, Transit Committee met for its fifth meeting this year. The meeting video can be found at this link.
Reliability continues to be the big issue facing OC Transpo. This meeting, councillors discussed reliability problems, the electric bus program and fleet assignments, and funding splits for transit priority projects, among other topics. However, while councillors talk a good game about supporting public transit, many have a track record of opposing programs which would improve reliability. In this context, empty words only calls to mind broken promises, not that of a more transit-oriented future.
Much of the discussion was triggered by a staff report on reliability, whose contents were discussed at the meeting and are in this article. I will write a response to the report itself in a separate article. This meeting also included a Stage 2 update, which will be separate as usual.
This is the first meeting after Renee Amilcar's departure from OC Transpo. Troy Charter, the director of rail operations, has become acting general manager pending a search for a permanent figure.
Documents archive, all in PDF format:
There were also a large number of inquiries answered this meeting:
- Fire Safety Code for E-Bus Garages
- O-Train Line 2 Service Schedule
- Para Transpo Eligibility Reviews and Vehicle Assignment Procedures
- Line 1 LRT Construction Road Closures
- Line 1 East Extension Bus Service
Update
Timestamp at 34:15.
The fall service change went into effect on 24 August. This includes a new 105 from St. Laurent to the Airport, roughly mimicking the old 97 and replacing the 98's short turns; and the 58 replacing the 57 short-turns between Bayshore and Tunney's Pasture. School service has resumed after the summer break.
Sessions of Para Transpo Talk were held at Bowesville, Tunney's Pasture, and Hurdman. The choice of Bowesville Station seems poor, given that it is nothing but a large parking lot with no connections to speak of.
OC Transpo is holding [held by the time of writing] a "Rail Safety Week" with an outreach event at Hurdman on the 16th of September.
OC Transpo is finally beginning a pilot project for e-ink real time arrival screens at on-street bus stops. This was funded several years ago, and seemed to have disappeared into the ether.
The pilot will run for one year, and test their resilience to Ottawa weather conditions year-round. Five screens were installed, but one has already been damaged and staff were quoted as saying that the pilot would no longer include that screen.
OC Transpo ran special service for three events this past summer. The first was the Ottawa Race Weekend, held in May. 84,000 trips were made on the O-Train that weekend, an increase of 20,000 trips over normal. The second was Canada Day. The train network saw 246,000 riders that day including 24,000 on Line 2, which was the highest single-day ridership ever, including the months during which Line 1 operated before the pandemic. The third was Bluesfest. 650,000 trips were made on Line 1 and 87,000 on Line 2 during that period. It is not clear what increase this represents over baseline ridership.
Occasional evening and weekend closures on Line 1 continued throughout the summer, allowing OC Transpo to perform maintenance and Stage 2 East integration work. More closures are expected in the Fall. 
Staff removed "disturbed" ceiling panels at Parliament Station during inspections. At the time of the meeting, the problem which caused their removal had been identified (but not specified) and the panels were due to be reinstalled, pending final confirmation.
Sabrina Pasian, OC Transpo's chief safety officer, gave a presentation on the response to the Westboro Crash coroner's inquest, which was discussed in June.
Of the 41 recommendations aimed at the city, about half will be completed before the end of the year. Recommendations concerning training will be completed before the end of 2026, and "discussion and work" is ongoing about the feasibility of the remaining recommendations.
Terrifyingly for some of our esteemed politicians, many of the remaining recommendations will require a budget to be implemented.
The coroner's office has forwarded the recommendations to concerned parties. Staff are working on a report on those recommendations which will be presented in November, and a comprehensive update to be presented in the first quarter of next year.
Wilson Lo asked about the availability route familiarization training. Staff said that all operators, not just new hires, could request route familiarization training if they wanted it.
The usual safety KPIs were also part of the presentation. The first KPI was a new one, reflecting violence on transit. This is partly in response to racist incidents in Kanata.
The most common employee occurrences were traumatic/stressful events, motor vehicle incidents, and slips and trips. In response to a question from Wilson Lo, staff said the rate of collisions in February was the highest in a decade, and that most collisions occurred after the snowstorms, as snowbanks narrowed roads and reduced visibility.
In the slides about fare evasion, staff said that so far, ticket checks by fare inspectors found a fare compliance of 97.1%. This is obviously not representative, and staff said as much, adding that they were looking at new KPIs which could be presented to Transit Committee. Also included are the number of year to date tickets issued on the network, and their location. As usual, this is subject to the "streetlight effect", in which fare enforcement is ordered (or chooses) to target easy-to-catch locations rather than locations where fare compliance is actually lowest.
The presentation also includes interesting data on fare media used by those riders who were checked by fare enforcement.
This section begins at 1:05:20.
Ridership over the past twelve months totalled 69.3 million. This is a 4.1% increase over the previous 12-month period. In response to a question from Riley Brockington, staff said that this represents a ridership of about 70% of pre-pandemic levels.
In response to a question from Jeff Leiper, staff said that they are seeing a rise in fare revenue from 2024, much of it from adult passes and fares. Staff did not have pass sales figures on-hand, but said that roughly 1200 riders reached the fare cap. A reminder is warranted that fare revenue collected in 2024 was significantly below budget, partly because of a low average fare of around $2.20, and that a higher mix of adult riders would increase fare revenue beyond what ridership would indicate.
Wait a minute.
OC Transpo reports cancellations (and on-time performance) as percentages of service delivered. This is spin - "1.1% below target" sounds much better than "3x the target," but this obscures just how far we are, and riders who face regular cancellations, delays, and no-shows will simply believe that the City is lying to them after seeing a "headline statistic" on CBC or CTV.
Regularity, which measures the gap between buses on frequent routes [it is unclear whether this is for all time periods or only when vehicles are scheduled frequently], was 85% last month, while punctuality on non-frequent routes was 71%. There is no breakdown by time period, which some councillors do not like.
Marty Carr asked what OC Transpo is doing to control for early departures, citing staff's figure of 10% early departures. Staff responded that during peak periods, the Transit Operations Control Centre (TOCC) looks for outliers in departure times and does not have the capacity to control for buses leaving one or two minutes early. In the off-peak, transit supervisors and the TOCC track every bus trip and do control early departures, warning that the 10% statistic includes some noise.
She also asked about how OC Transpo adjusts runtimes, and whether they modify schedules for construction. Staff cannot control runtime variability without support for transit speedup measures. While minor changes for construction can easily be accommodated, major changes need to be scheduled in advance, and can only be made with advance notice.
Glen Gower, who as a reminder, is the chair of the committee, asked how reliability could be improved for the Tunney's Pasture-Eagleson trip pair. Staff said that interlining was a concern on that trip pair, as schedule variability at Tunney's Pasture changes every scheduling period, but their report makes no mention of it and there is no urgency to discuss this issue from anybody.
He also asked about the spare ratio, and in response, staff said that they were aiming for a 20% ratio. 20% is generally considered industry best practice. It is good news that staff are still aiming for industry best practice, which would allow service expansion without needing a larger fleet, and that they are still aiming to target a healthy ratio.
With regards to the charts, note that on-time performance is often higher in the summer due to lower levels of general traffic congestion.
Staff did not break out exact percentages of the reasons for trip cancellations.
The routes with the highest cancellation rates were Route 6 (7.0%), Route 12 (6.2%), and Route 7 (5.9%).
0.2% of trips were cancelled on Line 1, a very low proportion, and 1.7% of trips were cancelled on Lines 2/4.
0.2% of trips were cancelled on Line 1, a very low proportion, and 1.7% of trips were cancelled on Lines 2/4.
Jeff Leiper asked for a breakdown of the reasons for undelivered service. Staff said that Line 1 problems were mostly caused by security issues or medical issues, while Lines 2/4 were less reliable due to the extensive single-track used on those two lines - issues would propagate throughout the day, leading to a higher cancellation rate.
Para Transpo ridership was 873k in the last twelve months, 6% higher than the previous 12-month period. On-time performance was 95% in August and 93% year-round on both taxis and minibuses.
New Ways to Bus
Timestamp at 1:13:45.
New Ways to Bus was a major bus network change that went into effect at the end of April, which OC Transpo says went "very well." Some routes still run unreliable service, and staff say the strongest attention is being given to routes 18, 21, 30, 31, 42, 48, 53, 92, 110, 168, and 226. As part of the September service changes, minor schedule adjustments were made on many routes.
Buses filling to capacity was not an issue, according to staff.
Staff continue to respond to requests from councillors. They say that some requests are no-cost and can be implemented easily, while others require an increased budget from council. Changes are being planned for Stage 2 East to Orleans; school boards are reducing service demand; and reliability continues to be evaluated.
Cllr. Brockington asked where service feedback was going. Staff said that some smaller changes were made quietly, while the changes to Routes 58 and 105 were also made in consultation with affected councillors.
Electric Buses
This section begins at 1:21:05.
The delivery of the first batch of 30 e-buses is complete. OC Transpo expects to receive 19 e-buses next quarter, and to press into service the 11 used buses received from GRT. According to staff, an average of 21/30 of the e-buses are in service each day.
The delivery of the new diesel articulated buses is expected to begin at the end of Q2 next year.
This is a delay from the June update, with about 18 buses pushed from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026 as well as the delay of 40 buses from Q1/Q2 2027 to Q3 2027. This makes me uneasy that we can actually see 80 buses in Ottawa by March 2026. June's delivery schedule is posted below.
OC Transpo had six 6-metre minibuses and eleven 7-metre minibuses in service at the beginning of September. They expect to receive regular deliveries until April 2026, with no change from the June update. In response to Marty Carr's questions, staff said that informally, feedback on the new buses has been "consistently positive."
Delays to the bus garage retrofit means that there will be a shortage of charging stations for e-buses as they arrive. Staff estimate that 30 chargers, which are in place, will need to supply power for up to 110 buses.
In response, Hydro Ottawa is installing a temporary power supply into the South Garage scheduled to be completed in November, while work on the permanent power supply continues.
1000 operators are trained on the New Flyer buses, while 225 are trained on both Nova Buses and New Flyer buses. E-bus training for all operators is expected to be complete by Q3 of next year. OC Transpo's focus has shifted to training maintenance staff, which typically takes 8-12 weeks to complete (and will exacerbate the mechanic shortage while it happens).
The summer saw unexpectedly heavy use of the bus fleet due to Line 1 shutdowns, while Para Transpo service stabilized. Staff said that reliability was being managed by directing maintenance into pushing buses into service and onboarding of new buses. This fall, OC Transpo will rollout a new fleet maintenance schedule, an upgraded fleet management software, and a new yard management system.
The number of buses available for service has dropped from 521 to 511 despite a small fleet expansion, but the service requirement has also fallen from 540 to 519 buses, a smaller net gap. I am told that OSTA and the school boards are unhappy with OC Transpo and are returning to yellow school buses for many students, reducing the buses needed, but also increasing the spare ratio (and therefore the expensive physical plant) even further. Staff also said that Para Transpo minibus availability is stabilizing.
OC Transpo says they are continuing to hire maintenance staff to decrease bus downtime, and maintenance training continues at St. Laurent Garage.
Reliability
Timestamp at 2:49:10.
Earlier this year, Riley Brockington put through a motion that staff present information on bus reliability and how they planned to achieve their targets. Staff presented their response, as a 20+ page report and a presentation. I will analyze the response as a separate article, since I think it's worth looking at more closely than I could with a Transit Committee piece.
The presentation started with a lot of words from Troy Charter along the lines of "we want to operate reliable service." However, as outlined here and in many other places (a search for "OC Transpo late" will suffice), they fails to do so. It is the responsibility of Transit Committee to ask hard questions, and support staff in doing so - it does not help that Amilcar-era discussion was dominated with talk of the big three items [New Ways to Bus, the fleet shortage, and operator shortage] that distracted discussion from smaller, but no less important, components of transit operations.
In both the presentation and report, staff gave many hints that they do not feel that Council or Transit Committee supports the pieces needed for reliable service. These criticisms are true, and I will discuss them in greater detail in the response article, but some onus must lie on OC Transpo to discuss the trade-offs in more detail, given that Committee explicitly asked for such a plan (which as Riley Brockington noted, was not delivered), Ottawa's high levels of transit funding, and the fact that other cities do not have such erratic and undependable service.
One delegation (who will "reappear" in meeting chronology to talk about Line 2) talked about bus priority, highlighting the Carling priority project in particular. This is generally a good idea - bus lanes reduce the runtime needed due to higher speeds and reduce the layover time due to smaller travel time "bands."
However, I caution against putting too much hope into transit priority. As long as random interlining remains, buses will not depart their origin on-time; as long as underscheduling remains, buses will not arrive at their terminus on-time; and as long as off-peak service remains low, the lanes will not carry large volumes of people, but sit empty, unused.
A second delegation spoke about the articulated bus retirement and the need for higher capacity buses.
The City found no suitable articulated e-buses on the market, and as part of the e-bus program, will retire these buses, which are end of life, and replace them with smaller electric buses. Regular riders on the busiest routes will notice the change - more standees, longer dwell times, more pass-ups - and random interlining, and the practice of random interlining, will only aggravate this problem of poor fleet utilization (and one that honestly deserves its own article).
The staff response was that cutting service - I mean, "adjusting service" from six smaller buses to four larger buses, was a cost-saving effort, and that the articulated buses were no longer neccessary with the demise of the Transitway. However, they are not replacing four buses an hour with six smaller buses on the mainline routes, and combined with unreliable service, this will further reduce capacity and drive away riders on the busiest routes. "Average crowding" is not a useful metric when buses arrive in pairs and gaps are half hourly or more, even if the official data shows otherwise.
Glen Gower later asked staff how they consider a route overcapacity; staff restated the 2005 service standards, in which 90% of capacity is considered full, a metric which reduces overcrowding (but does not account for the erratic service operated across OC Transpo's network).
He also asked staff how bus lanes are made. This is very obvious. When a Transitway and another Transitway love each other very much ...
... staff responded that coordination with the Planning, Public Works, and Infrastructure Departments is required, as the authority for transit priority lies in pieces across different departments. Evidently, Council does not see the urgency in making them cooperate, nor in creating a "transit priority strike-team" which can recommend and advocate for best practices in such projects. In response to a different question, staff said that the budget for transit priority was also split across the relevant departments.
Some discussion revolved around how Council could support reliable service. Staff said that they could not be sure of reliable runtimes without Council support for increasing them (ie. the budget), and that road space was at a premium, and other users needed to be considered (read: Council blocks transit priority measures). Jeff Leiper pushed on this front, asking staff to collaborate for transit priority; they responded that there were both space and budgetary pressures, possibly feeling that there is inadequate Council support.
The exchange starting around 3:31:00 is recommended viewing, as it highlights several key aspects of the path to transit priority in this city.
Last meeting, Wilson Lo submitted an inquiry about bus service after Stage 2 East opens. Staff confirmed that the service would be removed without replacement, adding that removing those buses would help reduce the fleet requirement.
Lo also expressed concern that the 40 foot buses might not be able to handle large pulses of passengers, in the context of (say) a train arriving at Tunney's Pasture or a school letting out, and supported the sentiment that OC Transpo needs to purchase more articulated (diesel) buses.
Catherine Kitts, of all people, noted that certain routes have much lower reliability than others, which "drags down" (to use her words) the average performance in the statistics. Went unnoted was the fact that it hides the unevenness behind a system-wide "headline statistic," in which some riders, usually at peak times, when transit is the busiest, are more likely to face delays. She also noted the challenges that councillors (and advocates!) have in explaining to residents the benefit of rising taxes and fares, despite the horrible performance of the system.
Shawn Menard told staff that he found the slow pace of transit priority projects unacceptable. This is galling given his opposition to bus lanes on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South, and I'm told, in the Glebe as a collaboration with Ariel Troster. In this environment, it is difficult to see many councillors as two-faced, speaking a good game on transit while blocking measures that would improve its reliability, and refusing to confront actual dilemmas that they face in providing transit service.
An aside - the busiest bus routes in the city this summer were the 88, 6, 12, 75, 85, 98, 7, 14, 80, and 111. Compare that to summer of 2024, before New Ways to Bus, when the busiest routes were the 88, 6, 12, 7, 14, 75, 85, 11, 80, and 111.
I plan to request the ridership data for 2025 in January and will provide greater detail then.
Motions and Inquiries
Timestamp at 5:26:00.
Wilson Lo's motion on donating a D40i bus to a heritage foundation was carried by Transit Committee.
Shawn Menard expressed support for the motion, and asked for a timeline on restoring a heritage streetcar which is still held by OC Transpo, to which staff said there was no timeline.
Lo's second motion concerned the UTA (urban transit area, a tax levied on property) in Heart's Desire and Rideau Glen. This dangerous precedent was, thankfully, shot down with only Lo voting for. The Council standard, which to my knowledge was last affirmed in 2020, state that 95% of the UTA should be within walking distance (defined as 400m in peak periods and 800m off-peak) of transit service.
Riley Brockington expressed concern that this was "queue jumping" and that he was concerned with favouring certain (loud) communities over other.
The third motion was David Hill's, regarding an expansion of the transfer window, with an eye towards Barrhaven residents who were reported to be paying twice for one trip. This motion, which asked staff to take a systematic approach in reviewing the transfer window, was carried.
Lo introduced one motion ordering that buses purchased out of future budgets should be diesel, and that they should be "high-capacity" buses.
Shawn Menard placed in one inquiry, on behalf of Laura Dudas, asking staff to examine alternatives to the now-eliminated Youth Pass.
Lo's inquiry focused on e-buses, asking for staff to produce information similar to that produced by the TTC's e-bus pilot, including range, mean distance between failure (MDBF), bus downtime, battery lifespan and replacement cost, length of bus paddles, and the effect on operating costs and capability.
Riley Brockington asked staff to look at commutes for high school students in his ward.
Miscellaneous
Timestamp at 3:40.
One delegation spoke about the proposed Line 2 changes. In response to an inquiry from Steve Desroches, staff presented an option to increase service by extending Line 2's service span an hour earlier on weekdays and Saturdays. In return, service would be reduced to "at least twice an hour" on Sundays and/or late evenings. Line 4 would not see its service span increase.
This was originally meant to begin by 2 September, but was delayed due to complications with the scheduling software not accepting a "soft" start where the trains slowly go into service, rather than service at all stations starting at 0600. The exact service pattern was still undecided.
The delegation opposed the cuts, asking council to either provide funding to maintain service at 12 minute headways, or to retain the current service pattern, which was supported by many councillors, including Jeff Leiper, Marty Carr, and Wilson Lo.
Glen Gower and Carr suggested that the changes be pushed backwards, staff collect ridership data, and a decision be make later, possibly at the November Transit Committee. Steve Desroches suggested that staff implement an interim bus service for downtown workers who begin work early in the morning.
This is symptomatic of a broader problem - the lack of standardized oversight based on consistent standards. No one is sure how this became a priority for Transit Committee, how we ended up with a proposal to run service on a billion-dollar rail line every half hour, or whether this is even supported by ridership evidence. In this city, ridership is an a posteriori consideration. This is how public transportation policy is discussed and set in Ottawa - no facts, no standards, only vibes.
An astute councillor may want to ask some of the following questions when this comes up for debate again:
- What would be the net cost of increasing service in the morning, without making any other service changes? Could this be factored into the 2026 transit budget, which is imminent?
- Is there a possibility to maintain 12 minute service by branching Lines 2/4 on Sundays or during late evenings? Is there adequate capacity to do so? (Line 4 has half-length platforms as a cost-savings measure.)
- What is the projected ridership of Line 2 during the extended service hours, and would it be greater than or less than the ridership of the period during which we are proposing to cut service? Would this provide a net ridership gain?
- Could the early morning service be run at half hourly service instead, possibly using trains that are entering service from Walkley Yard?
When it comes to the budget, staff can only make minor changes; Council has the final word. If service is to be cut, blame must be laid at City Council, first for not enforcing consistent standards, and then for penny-pinching the cost of an hour of train service.
Sean Devine, through Steve Desroches, brought an inquiry about Para Transpo fleet assignment. The inquiry concerned customer notification when they are reassigned to a different vehicle type. Some riders were apparently unaware of their redesignation when a different vehicle appeared at their doorstep.
Staff said that because no reviews had been performed during the pandemic, a backlog had appeared, causing a large amount of shuffling in the past year or so. They also said that reviews were conducted by therapists at Lifemark, who are knowledgeable of both bus types and accessibility needs.
Staff agreed to discuss this further with councillors before the next council meeting.
Riley Brockington thanked staff for appearing at community events in his ward (River Ward), and also said that employee feedback he has received on Troy Charter as GM has been "very positive." Last year, Brockington questioned the City Manager with regards to Renee Amilcar's performance, which she called a personal attack.
Wilson Lo has received more granular reliability information sent to his and David Hill's offices, saying it shows that off-peak service is more reliable than peak period service. Lo cited one trip that departed on-time only 19% of the time in May and June. He asked for staff to submit reliability data specifically for the peak period, but did not ask for this to be made available on OC Transpo's website, nor for a breakdown of reliability in all periods. While Barrhaven ridership is admittedly very peak-period heavy, a more strategic push for more granular data should be a priority of Lo, one that would benefit not only peak period riders, but everyone who rides OC Transpo.
Steve Desroches asked if "progress" has been made on moving students to yellow school buses. Staff said that the axing of the youth pass has been "progress" and that revenues now reflect full cost recovery; informally, I have heard that the student transportation authorities are pulling students away from OC Transpo and towards yellow school buses.
Conclusion
This meeting, staff were more open about a perceived lack of support for transit, than they had previously been. However, much of the discussion from councillors lacks any systemwide strategy, and instead they focus on petty fiefdoms and singular trip pairs and the peak period. Councillors claim to support reliable service and transit priority, but nobody has any idea how to get there, nor any stomach to sacrifice either money or road space to it.
Several councillors also give the impression ... always give the impression that they are speaking out of both sides of their mouth, given both their indignation with the state of transit service and their complete unwillingness to face any tradeoffs. Many of the councillors that advocates like to denigrate show a more level headed approach, being aware enough to understand that the service they would like comes with the downside of an increased tax burden.
Until Council, as an entity, understands that pretty words and inconsistent oversight do not create an effective transit service, we will keep "achieving" the same mediocre results over and over.
Until next time.
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