OC Transpo

[eltodesukane]

All bus downtown blocked because angry offensive out-of-control Palestinians...

[DarthVader_1961]

Originally Posted by AuxTown

You just put the YouTube alphanumeric tag (nn5v2YEPIlg in this case) in the YouTube tag

• Video Link

Can I get a big wuh wuuuuuh

Hit the nail on the head with that video. Hopefully, the Line 1 issues at least will be somewhat remedied over the next couple of years.

Second reference that I can recall that mentions the tracks are an issue on line 1.

[OttawaSkyriseLover]

Originally Posted by eltodesukane

All bus downtown blocked because angry offensive out-of-control Palestinians...

Have the admins considered adding upvote and downvote buttons?

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by OttawaSkyriseLover

Have the admins considered adding upvote and downvote buttons?

The version of vBulletin that powers this forum (3.8.7) went EOL in 2017, and does not have this feature. The owner has been in the process of upgrading this forum to a newer version for years, and we can only hope that it will have this feature.

[rocketphish]

Riders grill OC Transpo boss at town hall
'We're addressing the reliability that they're asking for," says GM Rick Leary

Dan Taekema · CBC News
Posted: Jul 29, 2026 7:45 AM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

Ottawa's transit agency has pledged to put customers first under its newest strategy and dozens of riders showed up at a city hall information session Tuesday night to test that commitment.

For roughly an hour, Rick Leary — OC Transpo's recently hired general manager — fielded a range of frustrations, questions and concerns from about 40 people in attendance at the first of five summer town halls.

One woman said it takes her three hours to travel to her doctor's office by bus.

A man shared his exasperation with the lack of express and direct options in the south end.

And another asked why $20 million has been earmarked for a Park & Ride rather than being spent on transit priority lanes, arguing reliability is always going to be a problem if buses are stuck in traffic.

After the meeting, Leary said he and the staff who took part may not have had answers to every question, but the conversations they had ensure OC Transpo knows what issues people are facing and can look to make changes.

"You can hold me accountable. We're making commitments based off of facts, with the data that we have, making the adjustments," he told reporters.

"There's so much more to do, and we're honest to the public about that, but we're addressing the reliability that they're asking for."

<more>

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/oc-transpo-customer-information-session-changes-9.7288513

[Richard Eade]

Breaking News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-200-block-party-9.7287218

According to Mayor Sutcliffe “The Ottawa 200 Block Party will be a celebration of everything that makes our city special”

Therefore, the big 200-year Birthday Bash being held at Marion Dewar Plaza (in front of Ottawa City Hall), on September 26, 2026 will have:

The free event will run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and will include food and drink vendors, art exhibits and an "Ottawa transit museum" put on by OC Transpo, among other family-friendly events.

Any idea what will be included in the Ottawa Transit Museum?

Maybe they plan to tow some of the old buses to the party? Maybe a bunch of old photographs? What about recitals of TransPoetry? (Surely you remember such old favorites as “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when by the forward door we leave.”) Maybe a telling of the story of how OC Transpo couldn’t be bothered about transit history so it disposed of its old Street Car (which is now in Smith Falls)? Oh, maybe a requiem for the canceled # 3 bus route?

But my guess is that they will concentrate on the positive. OC Transpo could track down some of the long-retired bus drivers to record their stories of actually serving customers – like that miserable, stormy, winter day when Fred got out of his bus to stop traffic while he called over the south-bound children to his north-bound bus; since he knew that he was the next bus that would be passing them, and he still had a ways to go to loop around the end of his route. I think that there would be a lot of old stories. Those were the things that people remember as ‘The Good Old Days’, with respect to public transit in Ottawa. The days when the driver would say “Hi.” to the passengers because they had built a connection over the weeks of seeing each other. The days when drivers cared enough about their passengers that one detoured from Baseline to drive a person, obviously in trauma, to the Emergency Door of the Queensway-Carleton Hospital.

I’m pleased to hear from the Mayor that Ottawa’s transit past is one of the things that makes this city special. It certainly isn’t the present transit system that could hold that honour.

I do not say that to besmirch the current OC Transpo employees. It is just that there is no longer the time for operators to have the same attitude that was shown in the past. Stress levels are just too high to allow them to be human.

[dougvdh]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Breaking News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-200-block-party-9.7287218

According to Mayor Sutcliffe “The Ottawa 200 Block Party will be a celebration of everything that makes our city special”

Therefore, the big 200-year Birthday Bash being held at Marion Dewar Plaza (in front of Ottawa City Hall), on September 26, 2026 will have:


Any idea what will be included in the Ottawa Transit Museum?

Maybe they plan to tow some of the old buses to the party? Maybe a bunch of old photographs? What about recitals of TransPoetry? (Surely you remember such old favorites as “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when by the forward door we leave.”) Maybe a telling of the story of how OC Transpo couldn’t be bothered about transit history so it disposed of its old Street Car (which is now in Smith Falls)? Oh, maybe a requiem for the canceled # 3 bus route?

But my guess is that they will concentrate on the positive. OC Transpo could track down some of the long-retired bus drivers to record their stories of actually serving customers – like that miserable, stormy, winter day when Fred got out of his bus to stop traffic while he called over the south-bound children to his north-bound bus; since he knew that he was the next bus that would be passing them, and he still had a ways to go to loop around the end of his route. I think that there would be a lot of old stories. Those were the things that people remember as ‘The Good Old Days’, with respect to public transit in Ottawa. The days when the driver would say “Hi.” to the passengers because they had built a connection over the weeks of seeing each other. The days when drivers cared enough about their passengers that one detoured from Baseline to drive a person, obviously in trauma, to the Emergency Door of the Queensway-Carleton Hospital.

I’m pleased to hear from the Mayor that Ottawa’s transit past is one of the things that makes this city special. It certainly isn’t the present transit system that could hold that honour.

I do not say that to besmirch the current OC Transpo employees. It is just that there is no longer the time for operators to have the same attitude that was shown in the past. Stress levels are just too high to allow them to be human.

I'd submit how lining up for the bus on Lebreton Flats used to be such a bonding moment (or was that a bonding 30 or 40mins) for Ottawa residents. https://youtu.be/p4opnyzczfc?si=89Kryb13JtuHoIqH

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

[B]Riders grill OC Transpo boss at town hall
'We're addressing the reliability that they're asking for," says GM Rick Leary

I don't know what's more surprising; that they remembered to have one of these sessions in the central part of the city, or that they held the central one before any of the suburban ones.

[Richard Eade]

Thanks for the video, dougvdh. It is great to remember that there used to be such order in the world.

Great idea. Let’s all submit ideas of things that OC Transpo could include in “Ottawa’s Transit Museum”.

Ottawa has had a (perhaps surprisingly for Ottawa) strong history of public transit. Thomas Ahearn and his electrification of the old horse-drawn Ottawa City Passenger Railway is an example. The development of the Transitway, as a dedicated conduit to quickly move buses from one part of the city to another, was another ‘first’.
(And, Yes, ‘dark’ times should be included, as they are part of the history and need to be remembered.)

[lrt's friend]

The Beacon Hill bullet, operated by Capital Bus Lines was the model for Ottawa's many express bus routes

[J.OT13]

Would be great to have an actual permeant Ottawa Transit Museum for our heritage bus fleet and that streetcar that was restored. But pride for our past doesn't respect the taxpayer.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Would be great to have an actual permeant Ottawa Transit Museum for our heritage bus fleet and that streetcar that was restored. But pride for our past doesn't respect the taxpayer.

An addendum to the Science and Tech Museum. They already have an old Ottawa streetcar 854 from the 1930s, although not nicely restored like the one in Smith's Falls. We are doing a collaboration with the library but heritage is at a low point in Ottawa, a missed opportunity 10 years ago when Science and Tech was being rebuilt.

Ottawa has shown some vision in recent years but has spent millions poorly as we have seen with LRT.

[rocketphish]

Little benefit to come from Ottawa's $30M plan for commuters
The good news is that the traffic problem the city is trying to solve is relatively modest

By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen
Published Aug 01, 2026 | Last updated 1 day ago

The City of Ottawa’s plan to manage public service return-to-office commuting volumes has a price tag of $30 million, but precious little of that will offer any significant benefit to commuting public servants in the short term.

The biggest expense in the 48-point plan is $20.1 million to move up the expansion of a park-and-ride lot at Bowesville Station near the end of the city’s southern Trillium Line. The plan is to double the size of the lot by adding up to 1,000 spots. This would add a modest benefit to commuting public servants in the southern suburbs, eventually.

This is something the city was already planning, and it was to be paid for by development charges and transit debt. Now the city hopes to get up to half of the cost covered by a new federal and provincial fund meant to reduce development charges. Free money from other levels of government is always irresistible, but the benefit to the feds is tiny and to the province it’s non-existent.

The city also proposes spending just under $4 million on a sidewalk and enhanced express bus service to link the LRT’s western terminus at Moodie Drive with the Department of National Defence’s Carling Avenue campus. That will only go ahead if the feds pay most of the cost.

Federal government workers would benefit, but it’s an embarrassingly trivial ask. The city’s western LRT stops in the middle of nowhere. Can Ottawa not afford a sidewalk to connect it to a major employment location just 1.5 kilometres away?

For the moment, this is all theoretical. LRT service to Moodie Station will open next year at the earliest.

There are two things in the plan that will have more immediate benefit, and they involve an old idea made new. For years, suburban commuters loved express buses that would take them straight downtown. Who wouldn’t?

That service was ultimately replaced by a new approach that would drop commuters off at LRT stations, adding an unwelcome transfer to an unreliable service. Now some express buses are back.

The city will spend $1.1 million to add express routes from park-and-rides and other major suburban locations. It will spend $300,000 to continue express bus service from Blair Station to downtown. That last one is notable because it largely duplicates the service of the city’s stunningly expensive Confederation Line. The bus is faster because it doesn’t have to stop at all stations. Now there’s an idea.

Despite its obvious limitations, the plan’s biggest controversy was over a strategy to encourage people to linger downtown after work in the hope that this would spread out the afternoon commute. It’s not a terrible idea in theory, but why does the city need to inform people about what’s happening downtown?

Public servants have been working downtown three days a week for nearly two years. Surely they can figure it out for themselves.

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says the communications will be strictly about the changes the 48-point plan will bring. OK, but does it really take a $160,000 communications budget to describe a few new express routes and some traffic tweaks?

The good news is that the traffic problem the city is trying to solve is relatively modest. The city estimates that there will be 65,000 additional commuting trips weekly. To put that in context, OC Transpo ridership was about 1.4 million people a week in April. Even if all the additional commuters came by transit, the numbers would be manageable, but transit delivers only about 12.7 per cent of commuters. The vast majority travel by car.

City politicians are understandably keen to be seen doing something about commuting issues in an election year, but how big is the problem, really? Adding one more workday in the office will increase commuting, but the commute will be spread over a full work week. Before the pandemic, downtown public servants managed to get to work and home again five days a week. It seems likely they can manage four.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/little...m-ottawas-30m-plan-for-commuters-opinion

[lrt's friend]

12.7% of commuters delivered by transit. It used to be around 20%. What could have gone wrong?

[Richard Eade]

What could have happened? Well, let’s see:

In 2011, OC Transpo had over 1,000 buses in its fleet, and carried about 103 million passengers per year. Public transit provided about 21% of daily trips, in general, and over 50% of the week-day commuter trips to the downtown area.

Much of that success was due to Express buses that provided fast running along the Transitway and reduced the number of stops between suburban neighbourhoods and downtown. However, having so many of the neighbourhood buses continue into the city’s core overwhelmed downtown streets. The cost of running so many buses was also considered a problem by cost-conscious politicians.

The premium charged for the Express Bus service had limited the number of people willing to pay extra to get to and from work. This meant that many Express Buses were not filled to capacity for their journey, but instead provided seating for most of the riders. This comfort and the faster speed made Express Buses popular with higher-paid workers working in downtown. Unfortunately, too many buses were trying to use the limited roadway capacity through downtown during the peak commuting periods – and these partially-filled Express Buses were a big part of the problem.

In September of 2011, a bus “Route Optimization” was implemented, which affected most routes in the city. The goal was to reduce the cost of the service by eliminating redundancies and transferring passengers to more fully fill buses. These changes provided a modest decrease in operating cost, but began a slow slide in the ridership.

One of the changes introduced was to have the Express Buses service more stops along the route and allow non-Express-Pass holders to board the buses at select stops. This ensured that most buses going into the core had a crush-load of passengers. Of course, this reduced the appeal of the Express Buses, and sale of the premium pass dwindled. Beginning the first of January, 2017, OC Transpo discontinued the Express Bus system, creating a unified service, allowing everyone to board any bus that stopped. Replacing the Express Buses were peak-period “Connexion” Buses. The routing of the new Connexion Buses was planned so that they would be semi-express buses between suburban neighbourhoods and the nearest LRT station. However, the delay in opening the Confederation Line meant that those buses extended their run into downtown until September 2019, when the train finally started operation. After that, the Connexion Buses stopped short and passengers had a forced transfer onto the trains. This frustrated even more riders.

OC Transpo’s bus fleet was reduced to only 735 buses, assuming that the trains would move the rest of the riders. However, changes in the bus network were implemented well before people could actually transfer to the extended LRT lines. This means that many riders are now dealing with multiple transfers. Their local bus will take them to a future LRT station, where they will transfer onto a bus that is running in place of the future LRT extension, and then transfer again onto the existing train. Once the LRT lines are fully extended, there will be a single transfer from the local bus to the train – but that could be years off. In the meantime, the bus routes have already been changed, causing additional disincentive for people to take transit.

Q.E.D.

[lrt's friend]

You missed a few.

In order, to deal with downtown congestion, we bought a lot of articulated and double decker buses. Because of the additional capacity, we cut frequency on many routes, especially in suburbs. Less frequency, more transfers means slower trips.

During LRT construction. we closed the Transit ways for years, adding to travel time.

During construction, we created several 90 series route variations offering less frequency on the 90 series network.

When we opened LRT in 2019, not only did we add a transfer but many connecting routes had reduced frequency. The busiest parts of various routes were replaced by LRT was the excuse. In some cases, frequency was cut in half, like the 95 Orleans replacement.

During COVID, we temporarily cut frequency on many routes that was never restored.

When New Ways to Bus was implemented, some routes were made even more convoluted and were designed as if Phase 2 was already open. 16 months later, it is still not open

The elephant in the room is the number of times LRT service has been interrupted or reduced. for lengthy periods of time. And these problems are not over.

When Line 2 opened, frequency on some connecting. bus routes was reduced. For many areas, we have permanently. added a second transfer to reach downtown. Every transfer is added time that can never be reccovered.

Line 2 runs on an oddball 12 minute schedule that can never be perfectly coordinated with connecting buses, creating a degree of uncertainty for riders.

I guess this is more than a few additions to Richard's list.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

12.7% of commuters delivered by transit. It used to be around 20%. What could have gone wrong?

Suburban voters getting exactly what they voted for.

[skyscraperaccount]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Suburban voters getting exactly what they voted for.

Suburban voter here. I want extremely better transit, less roads, less free parking, more biking. I'd be happy if an increased property tax bill was properly spent. I want this in the suburbs not JUST in old Ottawa. We exist out here.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by skyscraperaccount

Suburban voter here. I want extremely better transit, less roads, less free parking, more biking. I'd be happy if an increased property tax bill was properly spent. I want this in the suburbs not JUST in old Ottawa. We exist out here.

I have no doubts that most suburbanites on this forum support transit. But the reality is that the Councilors and mayors who regularly support underfunding transit, interfering in route planning, pushing rail to the burbs and underfunding downtown routes, are mostly voted in by suburbanites.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I have no doubts that most suburbanites on this forum support transit. But the reality is that the Councilors and mayors who regularly support underfunding transit, interfering in route planning, pushing rail to the burbs and underfunding downtown routes, are mostly voted in by suburbanites.

The underfunding of transit was never or at least rarely specifically mentioned in municipal election campaigns. Mostly there was a discussion of general restraint in tax increases, and few would have paid attention to the impact on transit budgets or service, if it was even specified.

Many of the decisions that reduced transit service were hidden in the details of the big transit projects. The public was never informed until the changes were implemented.

New Ways to Bus was a fait acompli when the details were made public. Public meetings were only about explaining the changes, not modifying the plan. The public consultation preceded the process without knowing the impacts on the public. This was completely different from the 2011 optimization when there was real public consultation and it was still possible to make some material changes to the plan.

So, while we can complain about suburbanites supporting budget constraint, most had no idea that this would damage transit service. We know now, but as been pointed out, it has been 'death by a thousand cuts'. It was not one or two decisions that produced the current situation, but many decisions. Without being a transit nerd, most would never understand the building negative impacts. i doubt that our city councillors even understood the cumulative effect of their decisions over a number of years. If our councillors could not see what was happening, the general public certainly would not.