Another month, another Transit Committee.
The spalling trouble remained unresolved and the surface network remained unreliable throughout February. Adding to these problems, an ice storm whipped through town the day before the meeting, causing Line 1's catenary wires to snap and forcing three days of R1 service on the network.
The video link for the meeting can be found here.
The Stage 2 update, as always, will be posted separately. This will include Committee's discussion of how the spalling issue may affect Stage 2 East's opening date.
Documents list for this meeting:
Update
Transit Worker Appreciation Day is on the 18th, so at the beginning of the meeting, management played a short video and held a short presentation on this subject.
Regarding the mess around Line 1 following the ice storm on the 11th of March, arcing on the catenary was reported around 1230 in the humid microclimate between Hurdman and Lees. As a result of a wire snap there, service went offline east of downtown for three days, with R1 operating instead. Later, wire snaps were reported at Blair and Tremblay as well.
Reportedly, this should have been avoided by running R1 when there is severe freezing rain. But there are not enough buses for regular service, let alone R1, and Council is terrified of the bad press that would bring, so train service ran instead, leading to this break.
Wilson Lo asked whether the damage was similar to January 2023. Staff said it was, and added that a heating system for the microclimate over the Rideau River was in study. Glycol application continues as before, and it has proven reasonably effective at preventing such damage.
The update starts at timestamp 21:00.
The spalling issue with the CBAs (the cartridge bearing assemblies, the interface between the axles and the wheels) continues, cutting service hours on Line 1 by nearly a third. OC Transpo's strategy is to maintain enough bearings to maintain 15-train peak service, and focus on returning the entire fleet to service. As staff put it later in the meeting, there are supply chain problems with replacing enough CBAs for 26 trains, and this is the only viable path forwards. Meetings with RTG and Alstom are ongoing, as part of the effort to resolve this issue.
A technical briefing will be held once a solution has been identified.
Stage 2 East trial running is dependent on restoring the full fleet. That extension is currently projected to open in Q2 2026.
Staff presented bus delivery statistics for most of February and early March. I am not going to bore you with that data, which is available on OC Transpo's website, featuring the usual unreadable charts. Charter predicted that full 520-bus service would return by the April service change, which is at the end of this month.
Riley Brockington asked why reliability falls after each weekend. Due to the staff shortage, many mechanic positions go unfilled on weekends, so work goes undone each weekend, and availability only rises through the workweek as mechanics prefer to work during the week.
Note: the general situation is evolving and has changed significantly since mid-March. I am leaving the presentation information in place as a historical note, and also as a reminder to stop procrastinating on Transit Committee updates.
OC Transpo have not been able to purchase more than the 11 used buses which have now arrived from Waterloo Region. In its stead, buses will be refurbished and returned to service.
Since the February update, the size of the bus fleet has shrank by two. 26/345 articulated buses and 4/44 of the Inveros were retired, while 26 e-buses and the last 2/11 used buses were delivered, making a fleet of 56, as deliveries run slightly ahead of the schedule posted last September. According to staff, about 20 e-buses were in service on any given day. According to staff, this is as expected given the experiences of other cities' e-bus fleets. Some training for garage staff, operators, and mechanics is still ongoing, which does reduce staff availability until it is complete.
The presentation included photos of garage work at St. Laurent garage.
The delivery schedule for the electric buses remains mostly unchanged since the last update in September 2025, with some deliveries now expected slightly earlier.
Staff anticipate 110 electric buses to be in Ottawa by the end of March [note: this target has been met, more or less] and 234 by the end of the year, out of 354 buses ordered and expected in Ottawa by Q3 2027. Deliveries of the new articulated buses should begin in Q2 (probably June) and continue into Q1 next year, and the mini buses will continue to arrive until Q3 this year.
Shawn Menard asked how long it took between a bus' delivery and it entering service. Charter said that the process takes weeks, as there is a post-delivery inspection process before a bus can enter service. Given the fast rate of deliveries in Q1 and especially in the few weeks after the meeting, this accounts for the discrepancy between delivered and in-service vehicles.
Lo asked how whether OC Transpo has enough chargers for the e-bus fleet. Staff said that 68 chargers have been installed, and that there have been no problems with charger availability.
Compare the above schedule to the schedule from last September.
Associate GM Oliver Monahan, who was hired out from the collapsed GO Expansion partnership in Toronto, talked about the future plan for scheduling. [note: Monahan has departed from OC Transpo following former TTC head Rick Leary's appointment as GM. It is not clear whether the scheduling reform will continue, and if so, in what form.]
He told committee that OC Transpo "are starting to implement our plans to create the next generation of bus schedules." He talked about learning best practices from other agencies and OC Transpo's past. The goal is to implement the reform alongside Stage 2 West. Language around innovation makes me uneasy, but the rest is a good chance of pace, and a scheduling reform is sorely needed at OC Transpo.
During the question period (as I call it), Marty Carr asked for specifics on the scheduling reform. Staff said that "everything is on the table" - interlining, garage hours, whether the network is scheduled as a whole or geographically. It remains to be seen whether the current and future Transit Committees will hold staff accountable for scheduling.
Jeff Leiper also asked about the behind-the-scenes. Staff responded that they were primarily looking at the mechanics of scheduling itself, but route changes are a possibility. It was good to hear staff talk about the trade-offs of various aspects of bus scheduling, but it remains to be seen how long that will last into Rick Leary's tenure.
More Updates
This segment begins at timestamp 33:10.
General Manager Troy Charter presented the regular GM Updates. He started by highlighting OC Transpo's safety awards, Black History Month initiatives, International Women's Day, and the continuing Para Transpo Talk sessions.
This year, OC Transpo aims to recruit 360 bus drivers, 110 electric rail (ie. Line 1) operators, 27 diesel rail (ie. Line 2), 18 Para Transpo, 20 special constables, and 20 mechanics. This is a recruitment target and not a program completion target, which reflects that many people drop out without completing training. Of note, the rail operator pool is mostly filled from the bus operator pool, which means that one vacancy becomes two. An agreement was signed with the union to directly hire rail operators this year, which should make recruitment more efficient. Additionally, diesel rail availability has been weighted heavily towards weekdays, causing cancelled trips on weekends. Staff are currently reworking staff schedules to fix this problem.
Looking at mechanics, OC Transpo currently has 149 mechanics and 20 vacancies. Five mechanics were hired last year and another six are in training. Three mechanics graduated from the apprenticeship program last year, with four or five expected this year and many more next year (there are 19 apprenticeships ongoing). Meanwhile, there are 43 body technicians on staff with four vacancies.
Staff specifically noted that 36% of applications were sent through Indeed.
Sabrina Pasian, the chief safety officer, provided an update on the Westboro inquest recommendations. Of the 41 recommendations, 17 have been completed, 20 are in progress, and four are under evaluation.
OC Transpo's CVOR (commercial vehicular registration) rating with the MTO reached a new record for the agency, under 15%. I am not sure what this means, but am informed that this is good new for the agency.
Employee occurrences increased this year, with 77 incidents in January, compared to 71 in January 2025. The top categories remain slip-and-trips, harmful/traumatic/stressful events, and struck/caught. Red light camera infractions remain stable. The January customer injury rate was 0.33 per million trips, much lower than any rate recorded last year; the preventable collision rate was 1.12 collisions every 100,000 km driven, which is higher than in 2025.
Pasian also announced new safety KPIs to be presented in future meetings.
Staff discussed a new methodology for calculating fare evasion, though no statistics were presented. Inspectors will conduct as many checks as possible during the sample period, and focus on covering the entire system as opposed to just the stations - avoiding the "streetlight effect" I and probably others have previously highlighted. The figures will be weighted by ridership on each mode to calculate the fare evasion rate.
It remains unclear whether staff will take action on fare evasion on the surface network, where enforcement has been sparse and where the evasion rate remains unknown.
Reliability
Ridership fell from 6.5 million in January 2025 to 6.1 million in January 2026, a 6% decrease.
In February 2026, "bus service delivered" was 96.5%, which is 3% below their target. But from the other side, the cancellation rate was 3.5%, which is 7x the target. Statistics are easily manipulated to show whatever the messenger wishes to.
On-time performance was 71%, same as the 12-month average, while regularity (ie. non-bunching) was 82%, also average. The non-punctual trips were evenly split between early and late trips, 13% early and 16% late.
Staff also shared the behind-the-scenes for cancelled trips, although the chart, as usual, lacks a y-axis and an eyeball gives different figures than staff's presentation.
1/5 cancelled trips were due to no buses available (meaning that in theory, cancellations would remain at 2.8% even if OC Transpo received all the buses they need tomorrow); 1/3 due to in-service adjustments, possibly due to bad scheduling; 1/3 due to lack of operators, despite last year's operator shortage disappearing from staff's lips; and (an implied) ~13% of trips due to mechanical breakdowns.
The routes with the most cancellations were routes 12, 6, and 7, with 10.1%, 7.4%, and 7.3% cancellation rates respectively.
One remaining point of confusion is between "trips" and "service hours." Staff switch between the two when discussing cancellations, and different slides will say different things. This makes tracking this data a headache, and muddies the discussion.
Line 1 cancellations/service-non-delivered reached 32.8% in February due to the spalling crisis. This reflects service hours, not trips.
Line 2/4 cancellations sat at 5.4% in February. Switches at South Keys and Limebank remain a problem, and staff said that maintenance action is planned to improve this situation.
Para Transpo ridership was 73,300 in February and 896,500 for a twelve month period, showing increases from previous years. Reliability reached 95%, although both OC Transpo's definition of "reliable service" and their statistics' accuracy could be reasonably doubted and have been criticized by delegates who use the service.
Menard asked about the free fares for under-18s approved as part of the budget. This initiative is still scheduled for implementation on 1 July.
Carr, on behalf of Rawlson King, introduced a motion to have staff present information on how real-time information is managed, and to send cancellation data to councillor offices. The third section, which directed staff to review how cancellations are decided, was struck and amended to softer language directing staff document how decisions are made. This amendment was accepted, and the motion carried unanimously.
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