OC Transpo

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by dougvdh

One would like to think that the Carling DND campus has been enough of a learning experience to know that if we get the defense bank, it needs to somewhere more central like around Riverside / Vanier Parkway, Tunneys, or Bayview? All those locations have available (federal) land that is close to transit.

Carling was known to be a failure well over a decade ago. I remember the roadshow explaining the new campus to organizations moving there in 2011. The worries about parking and transit were raised then. That may be on DND. But Moodie station being built at a highway exit over a kilometre from the campus is on the city.

And now I'm sure there's a bit of panic on both sides. First with RTO 4 for public servants in September (which the mayor pushed for). And now the threat of bad publicity with reporters literally coming to the parking lots on busy days over the last few weeks to interview angry commuters.

The Bank could choose Riverside /Vanier and get shit 30 min bus service in the subdivision where they live. Or they can go to downtown Toronto and get the best transit network in Canada. Or they go to Montreal and get everything that is supposedly great about Ottawa accessible in a 2 hr drive while benefiting from everything Montreal has. Including functional public transport. Hey Ottawa will only be an hour away by HSR in 10 years. And you know this city will still have 30 min buses in residential areas then. Or worse the way things are going.

[Richard Eade]

OC Transpo already running $7M deficit in first three months of 2026
Report again blames lower ridership for revenue shortfall
Arthur White-Crummey · CBC News · Posted: May 22, 2026 7:55 PM EDT | Last Updated: May 22
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/oc...-in-first-three-months-of-2026-9.7209705

and

OC Transpo posts $7 million deficit in first 3 months of 2026 due to lower ridership
By Josh Pringle
Published: May 23, 2026 at 6:45AM EDT
https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/oc...3-months-of-2026-due-to-lower-ridership/

OK, OC Transpo was rung up a deficit of only $7.2M in the first quarter of 2026. That is GREAT NEWS.
Last year, the full-year deficit was $52M! If the next three quarters have a deficit close to this past first quarter, then the full-year deficit for 2026 will be under $30M. That would be a huge improvement.

However, there are some things to consider:

• The cost of bus maintenance should go down. As more e-buses are deployed, fewer of the older buses will need to be duct-taped together by mechanics working overtime.
• The cost of diesel fuel should drop. In the 2014 budget (last data I could find on-line), it said that only 22% of OC Transpo’s diesel fuel was NOT hedged and therefore was subject to ‘market fluctuations’ (read that as ‘increases’). I assume that OC Transpo has kept roughly the same ratio, with about 4/5 of the diesel that it buys hedged. Ergo, OC Transpo should be mostly protected from the massive increase in diesel price. And, as more e-buses get deployed, it is the non-hedged fuel purchases that will be reduced.
• A big driver of OC Transpo’s deficit is the continued drop in ridership. With Federal Government workers returning to the office for more of the week-days, the farebox revenue should increase over the coming months.

Thus, it is likely that the 2026 deficit will actually grow by less than $7M per quarter.

I will note, however, that OC Transpo is currently saving money that had been budgeted to cover the cost of running the extended Line 1. Yes, it seems that running a train is apparently MORE EXPENSIVE than running all those buses. Once that LRT extension is open, OC Transpo’s costs will increase.

Of course, the biggest elephant in the budget is the $46M ‘placeholder’ for expected payments from upper levels of government. How that expectation got included in the budget is a mystery to me.

[J.OT13]

So we've heard that Leary rides transit daily. I've also now learned that he thought it was weird the O-Train frequency was cut to 10 minutes, and he'd prefer aiming for 3 to 4 minutes. We may have miss-judged him. We'll see.

[ponyboycurtis]

I don't know what the plan is going forward when phase 2 is fully open.

In my mind I had Line 1 running every 4.5 minutes which is roughly what it was at the start and then Line 3 would bisect that frequency.

So a train every 2 minutes and change. Line 3 dead ending at Blair would be fine assuming they can manage the turn around and switches etc.

Between LF and Blair which more or less bookends the core of Ottawa proper would have very high frequency service.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by ponyboycurtis

I don't know what the plan is going forward when phase 2 is fully open.

In my mind I had Line 1 running every 4.5 minutes which is roughly what it was at the start and then Line 3 would bisect that frequency.

So a train every 2 minutes and change. Line 3 dead ending at Blair would be fine assuming they can manage the turn around and switches etc.

Between LF and Blair which more or less bookends the core of Ottawa proper would have very high frequency service.

That would be ideal. LF to, we'll say Lees, is the core of the system acting more like an subway in an urban area. Then you have Hurdman as a major transfer, the intermodal Tremblay, St. Laurent as a major transfer of urban east bus routes, Cyrville quickly densifying and Blair, another urban bus transfer. Outside of that, it will be mostly rush hour suburban commuters.

[ponyboycurtis]

In another 5 years or so when P2 is fully open and a bunch of shovel ready/under construction TODs are completed the network will start to make sense.

Banish the thought of westbound transfers at Tunneys to the abyss where it belongs.

Hopefully by that point the bus service will have reconciled its finances and we could perhaps get back to where we were pre 2008.

This would be contingent on a new line of thought from our Mayors and some help from the province. Linking key employment centres like the DOD campus and Kanata North tech park are essential in getting our rider numbers to where they need to be.

I forget what the current number of parking spaces at DOD is but I was reading on reddit the other day back when it was Nortel at peak there was something in the region of 10k parking spaces? That is like a mind bending number.

According to PCL there is currently 6,500 parking spaces at the CTC right now.

DOD campus has around 5,000 right now for comparison.

Taking a thousand cars from that and adding monthly pass times 12 is 1.662M a year at current prices. Not exactly chump change.

[OTSkyline]

That's actually a really interesting idea. What if DND partnered with CTC for employee parking and they ran a shuttle to/from the campus? It's not very far, would ensure anyone who wants a spot, can get a spot. And for the CTC it's extra income and doesn't interfere with any of their events (which are evenings & weekends).

[zzptichka]

Nah they'd rather pave over the Greenbelt and Baseball diamonds.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

So we've heard that Leary rides transit daily. I've also now learned that he thought it was weird the O-Train frequency was cut to 10 minutes, and he'd prefer aiming for 3 to 4 minutes. We may have miss-judged him. We'll see.

Well, now, that's interesting.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

So we've heard that Leary rides transit daily. I've also now learned that he thought it was weird the O-Train frequency was cut to 10 minutes, and he'd prefer aiming for 3 to 4 minutes. We may have miss-judged him. We'll see.

I’d rather be cautiously optimistic.

[rocketphish]

Ooops!

OC Transpo double-decker bus comes loose of tow truck, hits Trainyards Farm Boy
The decommissioned bus was heading to an OC Transpo maintenance facility when it came loose from a tow truck.

By Michael McBean, Special to the Citizen
Published May 26, 2026 | Last updated 1 hour ago



A decommissioned OC Transpo double-decker bus hit the Farm Boy on Belfast Road on Tuesday afternoon after it came loose from a tow truck, according to the City of Ottawa.

The city said the incident happened at around 1:15 p.m. while the bus was being taken to an OC Transpo maintenance facility. The main OC Transpo garage is only a few hundred metres away.

The front end of the double-decker bus could be seen pressed against the side of the Farm Boy building after the vehicle crossed over the sidewalk and came to a stop beside a tree.

In a statement, the city said the bus “made contact with a building while travelling on Belfast Road during transport to an OC Transpo maintenance facility.”

OC Transpo said Ottawa Police Service and Ottawa Fire Services responded to the scene. No injuries were reported.

“An investigation is underway to determine why the bus became detached from the tow truck,” the city said.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/oc-transpo-double-decker-bus-hits-trainyards-farm-boy

[rocketphish]

Reliability is the promise from OC Transpo's new boss
Rick Leary said he wants to "change the narrative" around Ottawa transit after several tough years.

By Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Citizen
Published Jun 01, 2026 | Last updated 1 hour ago
6 minute read

OC Transpo general manager Rick Leary is hoping to “change the narrative” and steer clear of the negative media attention surrounding the organization he was tapped to lead two months ago.

Leary highlighted some of the positive progress OC Transpo has made in recent months amid headlines about unreliable bus service and cancelled trips through the winter, an unresolved “spalling” issue that forced 41 O-Train cars out of service in January, a maintenance backlog with its aging diesel fleet and the delayed delivery of e-buses, a mounting deficit and a recent auditor general’s report that found some “blatantly obvious” contraventions in hiring practices during his predecessor Renée Amilcar’s tenure from 2021 to 2025.

On Day 60 of his tenure on May 26, Leary sat down with the Ottawa Citizen to talk about early momentum, while acknowledging some of the challenges ahead.

<more>

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/reliability-oc-transpo-new-boss

[skyscraperaccount]

...and Amilcar continues to fall upwards. Sutcliffe should have terminated them when they took came in but nope...gotta allow Watson era hires to influence OC for a couple more years.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by skyscraperaccount

...and Amilcar continues to fall upwards. Sutcliffe should have terminated them when they took came in but nope...gotta allow Watson era hires to influence OC for a couple more years.

Amilcar?

[lrt's friend]

Ridership continues to fall. I wonder why. I don't believe that return to normal service on Line 1 on June 8th is the magic bullet. New Ways to Bus is a big flop.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/oc-transpo-sees-fewer-passengers-for-four-straight-months/

[skyscraperaccount]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Amilcar?

"a recent auditor general’s report that found some “blatantly obvious” contraventions in hiring practices during his predecessor Renée Amilcar’s tenure from 2021 to 2025."

[Richard Eade]

Reading this CTVNEWS article from Josh Pringle about OC Transpo having declining ridership over the first four months of 2026 (https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/oc-transpo-sees-fewer-passengers-for-four-straight-months/) made me wonder what ridership had been like, in the longer term. That search led me to a Webpage showing some of OC Transpo’s Key Performance Indicators. Is this a new page that OC Transpo has added to move to more transparency? (Unfortunately, OC Transpo DOES NOT put a publishing date on its Webpages. )

Check out the page, if you haven’t already:
https://www.octranspo.com/en/about-us/transparency/kpis

Something that strikes me is the graph of O-Train Service Delivery. The service delivery goal is still 99.5%, of course. And Line 1 had been achieving that level, OR ABOVE, until January, 2026, when spalling was detected. Line 1 is, apparently back up to 99.7% service delivered for April, 2026.

However, Lines 2 & 4 do not appear to have ever even met the 99.5% level. Oddly, I think that people have the impression that Line 1 is less reliable than Lines 2 & 4 – but that doesn’t play out in the numbers. It makes me wonder what the issues are with Lines 2 & 4?

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Something that strikes me is the graph of O-Train Service Delivery. The service delivery goal is still 99.5%, of course. And Line 1 had been achieving that level, OR ABOVE, until January, 2026, when spalling was detected. Line 1 is, apparently back up to 99.7% service delivered for April, 2026.

The other relevant question is 99.5% of what. Given that it is based on scheduled service, if schedules and frequencies are cut back, reliability improves but service doesn't. Likewise, if you go to one-car trains that are crowded and unpleasant, that does not show in those figures. The cuts to service and capacity on Line 1 are clearly another factor in declining ridership that isn't really highlighted in those figures.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by skyscraperaccount

"a recent auditor general’s report that found some “blatantly obvious” contraventions in hiring practices during his predecessor Renée Amilcar’s tenure from 2021 to 2025."

But she's not "falling upward" at OC Transpo any more, is what I mean.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Reading this CTVNEWS article from Josh Pringle about OC Transpo having declining ridership over the first four months of 2026 (https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/oc-transpo-sees-fewer-passengers-for-four-straight-months/) made me wonder what ridership had been like, in the longer term. That search led me to a Webpage showing some of OC Transpo’s Key Performance Indicators. Is this a new page that OC Transpo has added to move to more transparency? (Unfortunately, OC Transpo DOES NOT put a publishing date on its Webpages. )

The Transit Nerds of this world need to start rattling the cage more on data transparency from OC Transpo. It is not good.