Transit Committee - 11 June, 2026

 On Thursday 11 June, Transit Committee gathered for its June meeting. The meeting link can be found here.

The meeting centered around the Customer First Action Plan announced last month, and provided reasons to be both optimistic and pessimistic. The spalling problem seems to be receding into the rearview mirror, and the fleet is slowly improving, albeit with the temporarily cancelled trips (TCTs) still in place. However, this is not OC Transpo's first brush with great-sounding action plans which have not worked so well in reality, and their capacity for long-term planning and Council's ability to supervise such an undertaking remains in question.

The Stage 2 update and related talk has been quarantined into its own post again. That should hopefully be posted in a few days.

Documents list:

• OC Transpo Update - English
• Stage 2 Light Rail Transit Project
• OC Transpo Public Safety Strategy
• Motion - Saturday Service on OC Transpo Route 92
• Desroches - Response to Inquiry - Community Feedback for Limebank, Bowesville, and Leitrim Stations
• Carr - Response to Inquiry - Transit Station Elevators
• Carr - Response to Inquiry - OC Transpo Peak Ridership Definition and Service Planning

Route 48 service snapshot - 13 April-10 May

 Route 48 is an Alta Vista local route, running from Hurdman Station on Coronation Avenue and Russell Road to Elmvale, then south to Southvale, west on Walkley, and northwest on Kilborn Avenue to Billings Bridge. From there, it runs down Bank and Sunnyside to Carleton University and a Line 2 connection. This is the busiest post-New Ways to Bus local route, with around 3600 weekday riders.

Despite this, the route faces several challenges. Cancellations are high and peak period bunching is as severe as on frequent routes, leaving large gaps in service. Northbound service also lacks scheduled runtime. This all comes together to create a bus route that is unreliable on weekdays, especially during peak periods.

Bus After Midnight, Pt. I: the last bus of the day

Every day at midnight, transit service stops for the night, only to resume the next morning. Shutting down a transit service is more complex than it seems though, and an examination of late night service on OC Transpo reveals some patterns that are difficult to spot during the more complex daytime service. 

Evening service levels are lower than other periods for good reason. This period sees lower travel demand, and agencies schedule more service during the day when it can serve the most passengers and needs a lower subsidy, such as that seen in the TTC chart below. 

Note: while OC Transpo runs with a greater subsidy on most routes, there is no reason to believe that this pattern is different - ridership figures show lower passenger counts in the evening. 

But this is not a reason to abandon sensible late night network planning. As the chart above demonstrates, even in 2022, evening ridership was lower than it was at the peak of OC Transpo ridership in 2011. Night service often serves low income residents - service workers finshing work at the city's stores and restaurants, students returning home after late classes, and shift workers working late shifts. Additionally, many people occasionally ride late night service, and the availability of service may induce them to keep riding transit instead of switching to driving. 

This is the first of a two part series. This post will examine late night connections, especially last trips and Line 1 headways. The second post will look at the overnight bus network, focusing on coverage, scheduling quirks, and connections at Rideau Station. This will be more speculative than my usual, with some crayons in each part. 

Transit Committee - 12 March, 2026

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: 

• Stage 2 Light Rail Report
• Motion - Implement of a [sic] Communication Protocol

Transit Committee - 24 November, 2025

On the 24th of November, Transit Committee met for its sixth and final meeting of the year. The meeting link, for those interested, was uploaded to YouTube here. 

As the last Transit Committee meeting of the year, discussion centered around the budget. It includes $47 million in funding from the provincial government that may or not materialize, a small fare increase, and "savings and efficiencies." There was also some discussion around a David Hill inquiry on standardizing the transfer window following reports that commuters were paying double fares for a single trip and a Wilson Lo motion to staff to procure articulated diesel buses. 

Over twenty delegates appeared before the Committee on the budget, and a few delegated on a Wilson Lo motion to allow diesel bus procurement in the coming years. 

I have posted the documents for this update below. 

• 2026 Draft Operating and Capital Budget
• Multi-Year Budget
• Response to Inquiry: Central Park High School Routes
• Response to Inquiry: Line 1 and 2 Regulatory Oversight
• Inquiries and Motions ending 13 November, 2025
• Motion - 2026 Bus Procurement

Ultimately, the budget passed 8-1, with only Riley Brockington voting against and Marty Carr dissenting on the fare schedule. 

Bus Scheduling, Part III: Efficiencies, Improvements, and Flexibility

Introduction

This is the third and final part of the series on bus scheduling. The first two parts can be found here. 

Remember that OC Transpo claims that their system "permit[s] more flexibility," "increase[s] efficiency," and "reduce[s] operating costs." 

In fact, their scheduling system is not flexible, does not increase efficiency, and increases operating subsidies through a combination of unreliable service and increased deadhead and layover times, which are not, or cannot, be manually revised to ensure cost savings. By ending random interlining and looking at bus operating cost from a standpoint of bus allocation rather than the endlessly stupid "1 minute of travel time savings is $40,000 saved!" from the last Transit Committee meeting, we can improve service, if only the network and schedule design was treated as part of the process rather than as stone tablets handed down from God himself. 

Bus Scheduling, Part II: Interlining

Introduction

This is the second part of a three-part series. To read the first part on runtimes and layovers, click here. 

In this article, I will focus on the practice of interlining. 

According to OC Transpo, whose memo you can read here, interlining is 

essential to delivering the most efficient scheduling solution ... There are two main goals of interlining: to permit more flexibility from a vehicle type and capacity perspective. For example, high-capacity buses can be moved throughout the network to deliver service on specific trips that require those buses; and to increase efficiency by reducing the overall number of buses and bus operators required to provide the service, which can help to reduce operating costs.

 

 As we shall see, neither of these things are true. 

Currently, 27 per cent of all in-service trips are followed by a trip on a different route, and 40 per cent of all existing blocks include four or more different routes. Most (72 per cent) deadheads are short and have a duration of five minutes or less. A quarter of all deadheads are between five and 30 minutes in duration, and about three per cent of all deadheads are 30 minutes or more in duration, to or from the most remote parts of the system. 

 

Bus Scheduling, Part I: Run Times, Layovers, and Propagating Delays

Introduction

Reliability is a major concern for both OC Transpo and its passengers. According to OC Transpo's own surveys, reliability of service is the primary concern of its riders, while Transit Committee is dominated with discussion of reliability: fleet, scheduling, customer satisfaction, plans, and more. It's clear that this is a major issue for Ottawa's transit sphere. 

This is the first of three articles examining OC Transpo's scheduling practices. In this piece, I wish to examine how poor scheduling can propagate delays across runs and routes, using a number of case studies. 

Disclaimer: I am not a bus scheduler, or any other kind of expert in this field. This is purely a casual glance at OC Transpo's practices, and there are always hidden "backroom" factors that are difficult to account for. 

In posting this analysis, I simply hope to shed some light into OC Transpo's scheduling practices, in order to demonstrate best practices in other cities and how OC Transpo is, or is not, utilizing them. 

OC Transpo has produced a report of its own on scheduling practices, which you can read here.