OC Transpo missing fewer bus trips, but still missing targets

OC Transpo missing fewer bus trips, but still missing targets

On-time performance rises from 73 per cent to 76 per cent in one year

OC Transpo has seen recent bus improvements in on-time performance and delivered trips, but still isn't meeting longstanding reliability goals.

Data presented to council's transit committee on Thursday showed that more than 76 per cent of buses were on time in August. That's a slight improvement from the same time last year, when it was just under 73 per cent.

OC Transpo defines on-time performance based on when buses start their trip, not when they actually show up. They're considered on time if they left no more than five minutes late and no more than one minute early.

It also measures the number of bus trips that were missed, either because they never left their origin at all or departed so late — the threshold is 20 minutes — that it must have felt like a missed trip to passengers.

On that score the progress has been better.

In August of last year, 5.2 per cent of trips were missed. That spiked to 13.4 per cent in January as OC Transpo dealt with a serious bus reliability crisis with winter weather and its aging fleet.

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The missed trip percentage dropped throughout the year as new electric buses rolled in.

This August, missed trips fell to three per cent, with 2.2 per cent of trips coming more than 20 minutes late and 0.9 per cent not being delivered at all.

"This is a good metric to celebrate, and we're certainly heading in the right direction," said River ward Coun. Riley Brockington.

The most common causes for undelivered trips are mechanical issues, traffic delays and operator availability, sometimes because of federally mandated break times for drivers.

Despite the progress, all of those stats fail to measure up to OC Transpo's longstanding targets. It has a goal of delivering at least 99.5 per cent of all trips and ensuring that 85 per cent arrive on time.

At Thursday's meeting, OC Transpo general manager Rick Leary said he would like to see the system do even better than that, throwing out 95 per cent as his preferred number.

Meanwhile, passengers aren't showing up in anywhere near the numbers OC Transpo has counted on. Its budget for this year was based on a forecast of reaching 82 per cent of the ridership it saw before the pandemic.

But during the first half of 2026, ridership has actually been about 67 per cent of pre-pandemic numbers.

It has come in below last year's total for every one of the first seven months of this year.

OC Transpo is expecting an uptick as a federal mandate requiring four in-office days means more public servants commuting to work and it's been making changes to ensure it can move them.

At Thursday's transit committee meeting, Pat Scrimgeour, director of transit customer systems and planning, said they're now looking at new schedules for another 20 routes this winter: the 8, 10, 13, 40, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 74, 93, 94, 98, 99, 105, 110, 111, 161, 162, and 165.

Arthur White-Crummey is the municipal affairs reporter at CBC Ottawa. He grew up in Ottawa, spent years in Saskatchewan covering the courts, city hall and the provincial legislature, before moving back to his hometown. You can reach him at arthur.white-crummey@cbc.ca