OC Transpo is changing from the Transitway days, and it is not clear what it will become. The first part of Stage 2 opened last year, with another set to open this year; meanwhile, the bus network is in an apparent state of meltdown, and with one problem solved (operator shortage), another has appeared (fleet shortage). It remains to be seen whether the situation will improve or not.
This year is also a municipal election year. As 20% of the city budget and the most visible signal of dysfunction at the City of Ottawa, transit will be a headline issue this campaign season. It is therefore essential that candidates and City institutions create and present a coherent vision of transit.
The City's Vision
In 2023, Transit Committee (then Transit Commission) passed a five year road map to "guide how we modernize
and grow into a world-class transit network with high service
reliability, high customer satisfaction, and highly engaged
employees."
In vague terms, it describes that OC Transpo wants to become a world-class transit agency investing in employees, meet the needs of customers, and other corporate boilerplate that I will not subject you to.
In the road map updates and in reports to Committee, the actual picture painted is uglier than the agency wants Council to think. OC Transpo scores low on customer satisfaction, reliability has not improved, assets are deteriorating, and they are playing whack-a-mole with one problem after another. Staff are (generously) reluctant to publicly share plans, possibly for fear of backlash. As stated by multiple councillors, it's hard to justify property tax hikes and simultaneous service cuts.
"I will never stop fighting to keep tax increases low. I will never give up on finding savings and efficiencies at City Hall. I will never give up on getting Ottawa's fair share from other levels of government." [source]
-Mark Sutcliffe
There is even less vision in the City's political offices. In Transit Committee, in public statements, and in their actions, they are committed to limiting property tax increases to politically significant numbers, and flip-flop on many initiatives, whether that's fares, service, or fiscal management.
Their Transit Committee questions indicate little curiosity, no understanding of tradeoffs, and zero willingness to take politically challenging decisions that would allow OC Transpo to stabilize its service and improve transit. Thus, staff muddle on with no direction to make broad changes, and service quality continues to be mediocre with no end in sight.
Priorities, Priorities
At the most fundamental level, operating any service requires choosing priorities. There is only a limited budget for each line item, so choosing a clear goal while understanding the tradeoffs is essential to providing a high quality service.
Councillors have dodged clear goals and understanding tradeoffs. Instead, they board the "free lunch" bus and whine about federal subsidies or "savings and efficiencies".
One example of this dynamic in action is the decision to prioritize service over reliability. With a semi-fixed number of annual service hours (not to mention limited resources to even run that service), OC Transpo must, at some point, prioritize either paper service levels or the reliability of scheduled service. Unwittingly, council has chosen to prioritize the former as reliability is a "backend function" where cuts will not be noticed for some time. But there was very limited public discussion, debate, or even acknowledgement of this fundamental tradeoff needed to achieve the City's budget goals.
Even worse, councillors are unable (or unwilling) to understand the implication behind this tradeoff. At one Transit Committee meeting, the councillors pressed on this saying that they didn't understand what staff meant by "currently, staff do not have policy direction from Council on whether
to favour reliability over service levels," until staff gave a half-hearted answer and mollified them.
Transit Committee quickly went back to complaining about reliability issues.
In this, staff can only help in understanding, and OC Transpo's communications must make this tradeoff more clear. But Council cannot dig their heads in the snow and pretend that there is a free lunch waiting to be found. If Council is committed to their stated goal of improving transit service, they must choose between low property tax increases, service reliability, and maintaining service levels.
It's all about Money
In light of complaints from councilors about the political difficulty of selling tax increases to "stand still," it's valuable to look at where cost increases are coming from - an analysis that's missing in both news reports and in progressive discourse about death spirals or underfunding.
The majority of this year's $90-ish million transit budget increase comes from the LRT. Of the roughly 80% of this increase dedicated to LRT, about half is from increased operating costs and half is for higher debt servicing costs. The remaining $15 million is scattered across multiple departments, at a fairly low rate, lower than inflation. In light of the large mandatory expenditure on LRT, it is easy to see why councillors do not want to hike the budget even higher than it is. The light rail project was very much former mayor Jim Watson's baby, and the current council is constrained by mandatory transit expenditure that is a political albatross and which they do not necessarily approve of - remember that half the current council are in their first term.
However, in their refusal to raise spending above a politically motivated cap, councillors are not leveraging that large investment in LRT for what it could do for the City.
In the recent budget process, staff revised their estimated cost of diesel fuel from $1.16/L to $1.10/L. This change brings in about $2 million, or is 0.2% of the transit budget. This could be trivially funded by an 8.4% increase to the transit levy instead of 8%, or by leaving a hole of $49 million instead of $47 million in the budget. But this will fund a (partial) restoration of more frequent midday service on Line 1, and a host of fare concessions for youth and seniors. Moreover, these changes restore services that were cut by this very council no more than two years ago.
In waffling around this service cut and that fare concession, fitting everything into a budget envelope, council hobbles the ability of OC Transpo to attract customers, maintain consistent policies on everything from service to fares. Their utmost priority is not a good service or consistent policymaking, it's property tax increases and a political fear to raise them more than an artificially set limit.
This council has subordinated their vision for transit to property tax increases. In 2026, candidates for office should announce that they will focus on a "rate of return" lens at OC Transpo, prioritizing high value investments into scheduling and LRT frequency without necessarily capping tax increases at this or that politically motivated number, enabling the City to leverage their existing investments in transit into a true high quality service, one that will enable fast mobility across Ottawa.
Looking into an Election
After nearly a full term of council, it's clear that they have no coherent vision for transit in Ottawa. A combination of artificial property tax increases, a desire to be seen as fiscally responsible but also investing in transit, and no willingness to tackle hard choices have left the service with major issues and no solution in sight.
A successful vision for OC Transpo needs to tackle these problems together. They will need to understand that retaining improving reliability will come at a financial cost, one that may not be supported by council; but constraining costs (that is, cutting service) is not likely to be any more popular. A lot of political capital will have to be burnt on this file.
The need to balance tax hikes and service hours will remain at the heart of transit operations. This vision will include a more transparent process for allocating these: staff will have greater freedom to breakdown the tradeoffs, rather than burying it on page eighteen of a twenty page report; the City will hold public discussion and increase transparency about crowding, bunching, and where service hours are going; and Council will allow OC Transpo to make minute decisions about service allocation without the fear of political interference in small-scale details.
The state of transit is not good. Stage 2 of LRT will be fully open soon, and if ridership does not improve, a multi-billion dollar asset will remain a white elephant on the City's books. Ridership recovery has petered out despite ballooning budgets, leaving OC Transpo's subsidy component to grow larger and larger. Meanwhile, the surface network is a mess, and we seem to have the ability to do no more than play whack-a-mole with one problem after another and nobody in office has any conviction to make hard choices regarding service allocation.
Time will tell whether 2026 will bring a new direction to OC Transpo.
Until next time.
