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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 02/10/2026

It's time to vote for better transit! Jeff Leiper is the only mayoral candidate with a serious plan to fix OC Transpo and get our transit system working again. Early voting is October 1st to 4th, and October 16th. The main election day is October 26th. Visit ottawa.ca/vote for more information.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 16/09/2026

It was nice to see BTO and our bus data mentioned at the Student Mayoral Debate yesterday Transit is an election issue We need to see candidates pushing for a more reliable transit system via transit priority, accurate scheduling, and a system with the resources it needs to make these big reforms

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 20/08/2026

If you toggle on the advanced toggle of "Show runtime", you can see how many of the schedules have a lot more padding Hopefully this will mean more realistic schedules

Route 7's runtime in the morning is extended by 10 minutes form 68 minutes to 78 minutes

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 20/08/2026

The new fall schedules are now released. Use our website to see what's changed. You can compare the fall schedules to the summer schedules, as well as the fall schedules to last sprint. bettertransitottawa.ca/tracker/sche...

The changes to Route 6 in the fall schedule, with a reduction of 5 trips on friday's

The changes to Route 75 in the fall schedule, with an increase of 6 trips on friday's

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 14/08/2026

What a great turnout! Thank you to everyone who came out tonight.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 30/07/2026

Join us at the @strongtownsottawa.ca monthly meeting on Thursday, August 13th at 6:15pm at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church (near Lyon station)

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 09/07/2026

Last week, OC Transpo implemented huge service cuts on weekends OC Transpo says that "A summer preventative maintenance program” is a reason But, we’ve been tracking every bus in operation by OC Transpo for the past several months, and there is no significant decrease in buses used on the weekend

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 25/06/2026

OC Transpo weekend service is about to be decimated starting this Sunday in the upcoming summer schedule. Check out our new tool at bettertransitottawa.ca to see the extent of the cuts and if a trip you rely on will be affected. (1/2)

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 30/03/2026

Improved service March 15-21 is largely because there were no school routes running that week due to March break. This means there was effectively no bus shortage that week. You can see the big dip They even were able to bring back all of the removed trips from January temporarily for the week

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 30/03/2026

We hit a record number of e-buses in service yesterday at 47, very exciting

E-buses in service per day since January

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 30/03/2026

Bank street time So many people that we are in the big room today

Sitting in council chambers while holding a better transit Ottawa business card

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 25/03/2026

Notice something special about last week? Last week had far fewer cancellations than other days. They even brought back the 255 trips cut from the schedule back in January. Almost no bus shortage How's this possible? This was because last week was March break, so no school routes were running.

Graph showing the cancellations and trips removed from the schedule since January over time. Last week had a major drop in missing trips

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 19/03/2026

With almost 600 cancelled and missing trips a day, and City Council saying nothing can be done on acquiring more buses any time soon, we can't delay the only thing the city can do to stop this bus cancellation crisis. The bus lanes need to be put in place now, not in one and a half years.

Cancellations and trips removed from the schedule over time since January 7th

On 2026-01-15, 584 trips were undelivered

On 2026-03-13, 589 trips were delivered

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 14/03/2026

With R1 running this week, we are back to January levels of undelivered service when you include the service cuts See our new dashboard to see if things are actually improving or not: bettertransitottawa.ca/tracker/hist...

Cancellations and trips removed from the schedule over time since January 7th

Which bus types are running in service each day since January 7th.

On 2026-01-07, 473 buses were in service

On 2026-03-13, 508 buses were in service

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 14/03/2026

With R1 this week, we are back to January levels of undelivered service when you include the service cuts

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 13/03/2026

Part 2 On days like today with train outages, our bus fleet problems are even more severe. Outages sometimes happen, and OC Transpo needs to have enough resources to be able to run R1 service without cannibalizing from the rest of the bus network.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 13/03/2026

Last month, we presented data on the true severity of our bus cancellation crisis to Transit Committee The only way we're getting out of this is using our limited buses as efficiently as possible with - Emergency bus lanes on key corridors - Hiring and retaining the mechanics to fix our aging fleet

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 30/01/2026

These numbers neglect to mention that most cancellations happen during peak periods, and if you look at trips at those times, trips are over 20% undelivered

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 27/01/2026

Our cancellation tracker now can filter for peak periods. This is when most people experience the system, and when most cancellations occur This morning: On the 15: 63% of trips cancelled On the 5: 56% of trips cancelled On the 41: 48% of trips cancelled bettertransitottawa.ca/tracker/canc...

Cancellation statistics during morning peak of Monday January 26th 2026

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 23/01/2026

We now have a bus cancellation tracker available at bettertransitottawa.ca/tracker/canc... This dashboard lets you view the cancellations on each route for each day and see the gaps in service that get created by each cancellation. You can also see the percentage of cancelled trips per route.

A block diagram for block 88-11 and 901-704. A “block” generally is the path one bus will take throughout the day. This diagram shows how a bus was pulled from one block to another block to complete a higher priority school run. This resulted in all other trips being cancelled.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 22/01/2026

Having sufficient buses to respond to problems with our train is essential. Instead, because of a newly discovered issue with our trains, we are stuck dealing with both a bus shortage and a train shortage at the same time with no ability to roll out supplemental buses.

E1 supplemental service can't be run during a bus shortage

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 16/01/2026

300 high capacity buses like this one are reaching 16 years of age this year, which is past the expected lifetime of a bus. Another 40 buses will be turning 18. We can't expect to replace them with just 50 new high capacity buses, and we can't expect shorter electric buses to replace them 1 for 1

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 16/01/2026

Last week, there were days where 41% of scheduled trips were missing from the roads OC Transpo is now cutting some trips to be more honest, but we're still seeing a significant number of delays and cancellations — and there aren’t enough buses on order to fill the gap. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Even with the reduced schedule, at 8:45 AM today:

90 scheduled trips weren't running
40 trips were cancelled entirely

OC Transpo desperately needs more
buses and the current order schedule
will not be enough

We are asking OC Transpo to:
- Order more high-capacity buses to properly expand and replace our aging fleet
- Increase funding for transit priority measures on corridors such as Bank St, Carling Ave, and Baseline Rd to use our limited buses as efficiently as possible
- Hire and retain additional mechanics with improved pay and working conditions in order to keep our existing buses in service

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 11/12/2025

Yesterday, Ottawa City Council approved the 2026 budget. Councillors were good about pointing out the fundamental problems with our bus reliability, but they still voted in support of a budget that will not solve the bus shortage. Our full response: bettertransitottawa.ca/blog/budget-...

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 09/12/2025

The 53 consistently sees back-to-back cancellations around this time. Each of the screenshots below is a day further in the past The times in the middle are service gaps between buses, and yes, there was a 2 and a half hour gap yesterday at 15:09 The trips with blank columns did not run

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 03/12/2025

We have nice new fancy colour screens in our new Line 2 stations that just say "Every 12 minutes" because the project to get real-time train locations in the central database keeps being deferred. So, these screens we spent money on are now useless.

Sign at Line 2 station showing "Every 12 minutes"

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 25/11/2025

Despite some opposition, transit committee voted YES to re-open the door to more high capacity buses at transit commission yesterday following our support We welcome this first step, while still pushing council to buy more buses sooner, instead of delaying our next order until 2027

Transit Committee said YES to more high capacity buses

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 18/11/2025

Another normal day for Ottawa's bus shortage where council still is insistent that increasing the size of our bus orders is not necessary This is what we call 97% trip delivery

Bus cancellations on the 98 before rush hour even starts

Bus cancellations listed on OC transpo's website before rush hour even starts

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 13/11/2025

The 2026 draft Ottawa budget announces further delays to the Carling bus lane project, estimating the completion time for a bus lane project at 2035. This project was started in 2016 with designs released in 2017, which would make this be a 19 year long project just to install interim bus lanes.

City of Ottawa 2026 draft capital budget item for Carling Avenue showing a year of completion of 2035

$Blog post about this delay The 2026 draft Ottawa budget announces further delays to the Carling Avenue bus lane project, estimating the completion time for a bus lane project at 2035. This project was started in 2016 with designs released in 2017, which would make this be a 19 year long project just to install simple interim bus lanes. To put this in perspective, the O-Train Line 1 project took 7 years to build an entire train system, even after the excessive delays of that project. This is not a complicated BRT project, this is meant as an interim solution until a real BRT is complete. The initial project design (https://ottawa.ca/en/parking-roads-and-travel/transportation-planning/environmental-assessment-completed-projects/carling-avenue-transit-priority-measures) released in 2017 suggests the project is almost all relabeling existing lanes from mixed traffic to bus-only to give priority to buses on the busy corridor or Carling Avenue. Projects like these are the easy and cheap projects that need to be prioritized as much as possible. Not only will this improve travel times and reliability of one of the top bus corridors in the city, but this also allows us to use our limited bus fleet as efficiently as possible. Ottawa faces a severe bus shortage, which means we must make sure every bus is used as efficiently as possible. When a bus sits in traffic, it can’t be used to serve other important routes. Carling Avenue is also facing intense redevelopment with new apartments with very limited parking. That means many new transit-using residents need to cross the corridor. We urge city council to determine what is making this project take so long and speed up easy and cheap transit projects like this to get our city moving. \- Better Transit Ottawa$

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 17/09/2025

The next three 7s are cancelled at the start of evening rush. This is an every day occurrence due to the lack of working buses to run the schedule we need. OC Transpo needs to order more buses to replace the over 15 year old fleet and hire enough mechanics to get the existing buses in service.

Screenshot from the Transit app, showing a 56 minute wait time for OC Transpo Route 7 during peak hours, and multiple canceled trips on Route 7 during peak time.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 03/09/2025

OC Transpo is discussing potentially cutting off-peak Line 2 and 4 service to as low as every 30 minutes in response to council asking Line 2 and 4 to start at 5 AM. Let your councilor know so we can avoid a repeat of last year’s Line 1 cuts and not fall down the public transit death spiral.

"Staff are making arrangements to start service on O-Train Line 2 earlier from Monday to Saturday, aiming for a start date of September 2, 2025. The increased cost and maintenance pressures associated with an earlier start time would be offset by adjustments to the service frequency on O-Train Line 2 and Line 4 during lower ridership times.

Monday to Friday, the first northbound train from Limebank Station will be at 5:01 a.m., matching the 4:56 a.m. morning start time of O-Train Line 1. On Saturdays, the first northbound train from Limebank Station will be at 6:13 a.m., shortly after the 6:00 a.m. start time of O-Train Line 1. No changes are being made at this time to the scheduled last trips or to the start and finish times of airport service on O-Train Line 4.

The additional costs of this earlier service, six days a week, would be offset by some service reductions on O-Train Lines 2 and 4 at other times, when ridership is lower. Staff are working on possible frequency reductions late in the evening in the less-busy direction and on possible frequency reductions on Sundays. Trains on O-Train Lines 2 and 4 at these times would still run at least twice per hour."

This is a quote from OC Transpo's response to Councillor Desroches's O-Train Line 2 Service Schedule Inquiry from September 11th's Transit Committee agenda.

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Better Transit Ottawa @bettertransitottawa.ca · 08/07/2025

BTO is fighting for a transit system that is useful and reliable by focusing on smaller scale projects and changes to internal operations. We support bus lanes on corridors such as Bank St and Carling Ave, and we are working on solving the bus shortage. Want to know more? Have ideas? Contact us!

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