As part of Transit Committee's motion requesting a plan to achieve reliable service by the end of 2027, staff presented a report on improving bus service reliability at Transit Committee on 11 September.
The relevant document is the report, linked in PDF form.
OC Transpo defines reliability with three headline statistics, which bundles the entire network into one number. The trips delivery metric measures the percentage of trips which were not cancelled and ran at all; regularity measures the gap between buses on frequent routes [it is not clear if this is applied to frequent routes outside frequent operating periods], with a wide band of 40% allowance; and punctuality, which is on-time performance for less frequent routes, with an allowance of one minute early/five minutes late.
Both Transit Committee and OC Transpo love to talk about their commitment to reliable service for Ottawa residents. But OC Transpo has a poor track record of presenting good information to Transit Committee that would enable action; Transit Committee has a poor track record of taking action to improve reliability. To improve bus service reliability, Council must begin to understand that there is no free lunch, and make the difficult choices to improve service.
