Transit Committee - 9 April, 2026

On 9 April, Transit Committee met for its third meeting of 2026. 

This is the first Transit Committee since Rick Leary joined OC Transpo. Bus reliability is improving thanks to the better weather, e-bus deliveries, and lower service requirements during summer. However, the spalling problem with Line 1's CBAs (cartridge bearing assembly) has not been resolved, limiting train availability.

The link to the meeting video is here. 

Documents: 

• OC Transpo Update Presentation
• LRT Annual Compliance Report - 2025
• Inquiry (Marty Carr) - Number of Free Bus Passes

Spalling and Shelling

Video timestamp 1:22:15.  

Since the discovery of spalling on the CBAs in January, Line 1 trains have had their mileage limited to 100,000 km. This has restricted the availability of trains, and OC Transpo has reduced service kilometres to match. This has the most impact during peak periods, when there are 14-15 trains running single-car service, compared to the usual 26 running double-car service. 

Troy Charter discussed various methods to contain the issue, including bearing teardowns, the 100,000 km CBA mileage limit, and long-term, "smart bugs" to monitor the condition of bearings and remove the limit. 

CBA teardowns revealed the presence of shelling, a more severe form of spalling with a deeper extent of damage. The shelling was discovered on CBAs with mileages over 100,000 km, which staff said validated their mileage limit. It was found on the trains about two weeks before the meeting (around late March), which kicked off rumours of a full Line 1 shutdown. 

The teardowns are conducted 32 times a quarter with varying CBA mileages, and are not reversible. 

Long-term, OC Transpo's goal is to remove the mileage limit (obviously). The agency is currently designing "smart bugs" to monitor the CBAs real-time. These bugs will detect spalling and shelling, allowing trains to be taken out of service if damage is detected rather than at the mileage limit. 

Condition monitoring is considered an industry standard, and is commonly used across many railway operations. Full installation is not anticipated for another two to five months, which means a reduced fleet until then. Among other consequences, Stage 2 East cannot begin trial running before the trains become available. 

RTG is contractually responsible for the extra cost of maintenance and CBAs. However, the City is responsible for other costs such as drivers, off-peak frequency, and hypothetical R1 service; they can offset some of these costs through penalties in P3 contract. 

Riley Brockington and Wilson Lo both hammered staff on their lack of communication regarding rumours of the R1 shutdown and shelling - the problem was not publicly disclosed until Transit Committee, and the rumours were allowed to circulate (Rick Leary's introduction was heavily rumoured to be an R1 shutdown announcement). As Lo put it, "we always seem to let the [communications] be the story rather the story be the story." 

Jeff Leiper asked what the supply of CBAs looked like - after all, there aren't enough CBAs on the planet to run full service and replace every 100,000 km, to which Charter responded that Alstom has "secured a good supply chain of CBAs going fowards." Relatedly, the mayor posted on social media last week that Metrolinx sent a small supply of axles to OC Transpo (the Finch West and Hurontario LRTs use the same Alstom Citadis trains). 

David Hill referenced a 2023 TSB advisory which recommended the CBAs be redesigned. The advisory blamed rotating nut pins inside the CBA for the 2021 derailments. Notably, the CBAs use a design that is rarely found outside the Alstom Citadis Spirit trains used on Line 1.  

Staff have invited RTG to the next Transit Committee meeting to discuss the spalling issue. 

Update

This segment begins at timestamp 2:38:15. 

As a six-month pilot project, OC Transpo has installed plastic bus seats on one vehicle. The goal is to improve cleanliness and reduce maintenance needs.

My Para Transpo has reached a milestone, with online bookings now at 50% of the total. Staff reported that growth has been steady, and it has cut phone booking wait times.  

OC Transpo closed all restrooms on Line 1 in late February following incidents involving drug use, graffiti, concrete poured down pipes, and needles being carelessly discarded (I heard a rumour that they may have been deliberately placed). Staff intend to reopen the restrooms "in the coming weeks" pending improved security measures, but no firm timeline. 

109 electric buses were delivered to OC Transpo by 9 April, with 85 commissioned; this compares to a projection of 110 buses delivered by the end of March. 68 e-bus chargers were available for use, with another 36 in commissioning. 

The e-buses have accumulated two million service kilometres, saving nearly one million litres of diesel fuel. But to understand the impact on service reliability, which impacts emissions far more than the bus tailpipe, we need to know how this compares to a standard bus over the same in-service period, and no such comparison was forthcoming. 

OC Transpo plans to have 234 e-buses and 193 charging stations commissioned by December, and 354 e-buses and 329 chargers by the end of 2027. Manufacturers will trickle e-buses as they are completed, while the chargers will be commissioned in large batches. The ultimate goal is 354 e-buses and 329 chargers. The number of chargers is not 1:1 with the number of e-buses as some buses will be on the road or fully charged at any given time. Staff said that their goal is to have 80% as many chargers as e-buses. 

OC Transpo has been hard at work building e-bus infrastructure at St. Laurent Garage. 

E-bus infrastructure construction in South Garage, where work began in 2023, will finish in Q2 this year; work at North Garage has begun and will be finished in Q2 next year; the high-voltage maintenance bays at the far north end of the site have been completed; the hydro substation broke ground last fall and will be finished in Q3; and the new West Garage on the outdoor storage space will begin work in Q2 and finish at the end of next year. 

In late March, e-bus availability skyrocketed from to sixty buses on any given day. The e-bus deliveries, better weather, and completion of e-bus chargers no doubt contributed to this improvement in service - 40 buses is no small potatoes for a beleaguered system like OC Transpo's.  

OC Transpo continues to train its staff to work on the e-buses. Driver training for the New Flyers and Novas have reached 82% and 64%, respectively. Mechanic training is not so advanced - only 14% of garage attendants and mechanics, 29% of body repairers, and 5% of supervisors have been trained on e-bus work at all, and even fewer mechanics are trained on high-voltage work - 11% and 5% for the New Flyers and Novas, respectively. 

New safety KPIs have been introduced in the update presentation. 

As noted last month, OC Transpo's CVOR violation rate has tumbled to 15%, the lowest rate in recent years at the agency. The YTD preventable collision rate remains stubbornly high at 1.13 collisions/100,000 km, well above the 0.69 target. 

The customer injury rate was 0.43/million trips. The primary causes of customer injuries were slip/trip and hard brake applications. Employees reported 37 absences due to injuries in January and February; the main causes were slip/trip, struck/caught, and stressful events. 

 

The rolling monthly average of violent offences against employees was 14/month, and the YTD violent offence rate was 4.7/million riders. 

February ridership fell 7% to 5.4 million, while March Para Transpo ridership rose 10% to 81,100 riders. 

Due to the spalling problem, March service delivery on Line 1 was 61.8%, a further decrease from February's 67%. Line 2/4 service delivery was 97.9%, an improvement over February.

Bus service delivery was 97.6% in March, which the presentation touts as being 2.3% below target. Put different, bus cancellations fell to 2.4%, which is five times larger than the target of 0.5%. 

Service regularity (the evenness of the gap between vehicles on frequent routes) was 84% in March and averaged 82% over the past year, against a target of 85%. On-time performance on infrequent routes was 71%, and 70% over the past year. Of the unpunctual trips, around half run early and half run late. 

The graphics now include peak/off-peak distinctions, which is an improvement over previous iterations. However, OC Transpo remains incapable (a cynic would say unwilling) of providing a readable y-axis, rendering the information into a pretty line on a pretty graphic. 

Statistical presentation impacts transparency. 

Similarly, the breakdown of cancelled trips cannot be read without guidance. Staff said that 30%, or 1/3 of trips (note the inequality) were cancelled due to on-street adjustments; another 1/3 due to operator availability including Canada Labour Code breaks, a factor which has disappeared from prominence but remains a significant problem; 20% due to mechanical breakdowns; and 10% due to lack of buses. 

This implies that with improved bus availability, "only" 1/3 of cancellations were due to the bus shortage, and further suggests that cancellations are not going to fall under 1.5% without further intervention. 

The routes with the highest cancellation rates were Route 12, with 7.4% of trips cancelled; Route  6, with 5.9% cancelled; and Route 88, at 4.7% cancelled. 

Punctuality on Para Transpo, as measured by a 30 minute window, was 95% last month, with a better performance on the minibuses than the taxi service. On the subject of Para Transpo, one delegation talked about the need for overnight Para Transpo service, same-day bookings through My Para Transpo, and improved dispatching to let this happen. 

One of Rick Leary's strengths is KPIs, which he wants to introduce more of. Indeed, multiple councillors were impressed with the TTC's presentations, and wanted him to introduce these figures to Ottawa. Unfortunately, data presentation is not one of Mr. Leary's strengths - TTC charts under Leary had "capped" y-axes which did not show above-target statistics and misled the board about e-bus reliability.  

OC Transpo will expand bus refurbishment. Thirty articulated buses have been identified to be refurbished based on their current mechanical state, which will provide OC Transpo with more high-capacity buses at a lower price than buying new. 

LRT Regulatory Update

This section begins at timestamp 5:20. 

The RMCO (Regulatory Monitor and Compliance Officer) presents to Transit Committee every year and conducts quarterly meetings with the City Manager on the regulatory compliance of Lines 1/3. This year, the monitor examined the TPSS (traction power supply system) and the communication systems. 

The TPSS has not been monitored since the line began revenue service. Since electricity is required for the train to conduct important tasks such as moving, the monitor decided to inspect this system, which was done between June and September 2025. 

Compliance consists of four component parts at OC Transpo and five at RTG. They are self-describing, and can be seen on the slides below. 

OC Transpo is in compliance for all four elements of their side of the TPSS. The only recommendation was that oversight records be recorded in CleverCAD instead of Microsoft Excel. 

RTG is in full conformance (a distinction was made by the monitor, and has to do with the contractual relationship) with three of their five elements, and mostly conformant with the other two. The regulator described some repair records which had not been closed by Alstom at the time of review (the CBA tussle comes to mind) and high employee turnover which hinders training. 

Like the TPSS, the communication systems have not been reviewed by the monitor since 2019. 

The communication systems consists of nine separate items identified in the project agreement. These are the CCTVs, the public announcements, the passenger information system, the telephone system, the guideway intrusion detection system (GIDS), the communication transmission system, the high speed data receivers, the intrusion access controls, and supervisory control and data acquisition. 

OC Transpo is in full compliance with the regulations. However, the monitor recommended that staff document oversight activities in CleverCAD within 30 days, noting that documentation often took months; and to push RTM to regularize and increase the frequency of GIDS inspections outside the downtown tunnel, which has been erratic since RTM took responsibility for the GIDS in December 2023. 

The GIDS has been problematic and have caused slow zones near St. Laurent. 

The picture is less rosy at RTG-RTM, with 2/4 systems fully conformant and 2/4 systems mostly conformant. There were, surprise, gaps in GIDS inspections, though RTG is fully conformant in inspecting other elements. The monitor also found gaps in employee training, describing RTG as having a "90%" conformance. 

RTG's oversight program was also nonconformant, and missing a great deal of records. The monitor said "the only evidence ... of oversight is the annual audit," which is far below their obligations. 

There remain eight recommendations since 2019 which have not yet been closed. Two relate to the TPSS, three to the communication systems, one to hours of service regulations reviewed in 2024, one to track inspections, and one to the fence intrusion detection system at Belfast MSF. Ten recommendations have been closed since last April's update. 

To close an item, the monitor needs to find evidence over a long period of time, so an open recommendation does not mean that it has not been addressed. 

Lo asked whether recordkeeping was an issue at RTG, noting recordkeeping gaps from previous years. The monitor said that they have flagged this with RTG, and that recordkeeping at RTG-RTM has been improving. He also asked whether there were systems which have not yet been reviewed. There seem to be quite a few, but the monitor has limited resources and their focus is on safety-critical items, rather than reviewing every item on a set schedule. 

Hill asked the monitor if they had plans for 2026, and if so, why not. The monitor maintains flexibility to catch emerging problems - for instance, if the 2026 schedule had been set last December, the spalling issue would not have made the list.

The CBAs are obviously high on the to-do list, as is the catenary (which failed in the ice storm last month). There is no firm decision yet, but it will be made within the month.