The people with full power to expand rural transit service consider privatizing it🤦‍♂️ Because everyone knows private enterprise loves to deliver on the basis of equity and accessibility, and would never charge even higher fares than we have now. Councillors need to step up and do their job.

This is a win for transit riders - but the fight's not over. OC Transpo is in abysmal shape, yet this pilot won't even begin until 2027... This needs to be expedited and expanded (to include weekends and more 24/7 sections) and ultimately made permanent. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

Faster boarding, higher ridership, fewer driver assaults - and less time and bureaucracy wasted punishing fare evaders! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...

Full text of remarks by Noah Vineberg, President of the union representing transit workers in Ottawa (ATU Local 279) to Transit Committee. He rightly notes many of those sitting on the committee are responsible for the crisis they are now decrying. freetransitottawa.ca/atu-to-city-...

Ottawa needs more buses. We also need more dedicated lanes - to keep buses out of traffic and on schedule. Bus lanes can cut trip times in half and are badly needed on arteries like Bank, Carling, Baseline, Richmond and Rideau to speed up key routes like the 6, 7, 11, 85 and 88.

Ottawa is set to grow by 500,000 people in the next two decades. Will we provide good enough transit for all of them to get around, or sit by while tens of thousands of cars are added to our roads? www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

Sutcliffe says this is a no-go because it would mean less money to invest in reliability, which they are also not doing. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

We need emergency bus lane and transit priority measures enacted on key corridors to ensure our working buses are used as efficiently as possible. We can't have our limited bus fleet standing still in traffic.

Great coverage of the Launch of our New Vision for Transit last night! Fabulous turnout of many fabulous people. Fun, community, and optimism brings people together! www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic....

I love a good community event about an important municipal policy issue (public transit) featuring local musical talent 🚌🎶💛 @freetransitottawa.bsky.social

“It was haphazard to put all of the eggs in the electric bus basket. More buses are the only way we’re going to be able to offer the service that’s been posted and promised. But we are at a bit of a standstill with getting buses into the system.” www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

Join us at Irene’s Pub on Monday January 19th for an evening of music, speakers, and community! It's time to build a movement around a set of bold ideas to deliver the transit we deserve – without barriers and which provides a real alternative to high emissions private vehicles.

Gross indeed! www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

To overcome many years of neglect, we must urgently tackle the fundamental issues with bus service — not in baby steps over the years and decades to come. A city focused on affordability, climate action, and good services is waiting. Let's fight for it, together.

We did it- 18 and Under Youth Pass is coming to #Ottawa as of July 1st, 2026. It will bring free transit for youth on weekends, holidays, after 5pm on weekdays and all day every day in the summer (July and August)!

Free Transit: Iowa did it, Ottawa can too www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/c...

Those fuel savings are all over the budget, all the result of external policy changes from another level of government. The City of Ottawa has no right to claim that as an achievement. The only action the City took was not to re-invest those transit savings back into improved transit service. 5/

The 2026 transit budget includes $47M in savings from uploading the LRT to Metrolinx... a deal the mayor admits won't be finalized for up to two years. Why are we claiming money we haven't saved yet? This creative accounting allows the City to appear spending while doing austerity.

"Pairing free buses with paid parking says we value people in motion more than cars at rest. Some drivers will denounce this as a cash grab. But for decades, the city has handed out billions in free public real estate to a small minority of residents." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

In case anyone needed a better visual to show why the bus lane is "empty" and the car lane is "filled". It's pretty simple. Cars are realllyyyy bad at moving large amounts of people. They're definitely great for specific uses! But to rely on them for every single trip is where we have failed.

"The budget asks riders to pay more for the same unreliable service. The people who rely on it and the workers who deliver it live this every single day. We have less people riding our bus or trains because when they’ve gone to use it... it has let them down." -- Noah Vineberg, ATU 279 president

Bathurst Street #RapidTO at Queen Street. We love to see a better Toronto being built one bucket of paint at a time. #topoli

Plante roughly saying 'everyone's in the same boat with Transit having trouble' and that she couldn't find any cities that are successfully recovering. 15 second Google. globalnews.ca/news/9477981...

Cars Cars as far as the eye can see. We could replace pretty much every vehicle in this picture with two more buses.

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.

"Ridership has surpassed pre-pandemic levels by 18%. Bus drivers say they’re navigating less congested streets. People drove 1.8 million fewer miles and emissions dropped by 24,000 metric tons a year - the equivalent of taking 5,200 vehicles off the roads." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/c...

When transit sucks, many parents and seniors need to own a car -- maybe even two. This costs a household about $16,000 a year. Failing to invest in transit is a huge financial burden on everyone. Even worse, the city scrapped the Youth Pass and raised the senior bus fare last year.

Mayor conflates low taxes with "affordability." But when public services like transit remain unusable for most people, that becomes incredibly expensive. Saddling people with car payments, Uber/Lyft costs, air pollution and climate change is not affordable. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

"Quite simply, Brampton provides service that is good enough to make getting around by transit reasonable for people who have other options as well as for people with no other choice." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

With all of the talk about Lansdowne 2.0, and improving transit access to the location, this is the perfect opportunity to get fully dedicated 24/7 bus lanes, not just during "peak" hours. Delays for buses are almost constant throughout the day. strongtownsottawa.ca/2025/11/08/a... #Ottawa #Bank

Ford’s new “Fighting Delays” bill would ban new bike lanes and let the province block anything that “interferes” with cars including bus lanes and safety projects. This is a war on bikes, transit, and local democracy. Send an email to Ford and your MPP: www.horizonottawa.ca/back_off_ford

Green councillors in Glasgow have secured a pilot scheme for free public transport! 🙌 In 2022 we delivered free bus travel for under 22s. It's reduced climate emissions and congestion, and increased mobility and the money in people's pockets.

Normalize submitting Uber/Lyft receipts to OC Transpo when the bus doesn't show up.

There's lots to mull in this Citizen article exploring 417 congestion. All is not hopeless but there are challenges. Transit is the key to quicker commutes. Restoring and then improving transit will help speed everyone along.

Time savings estimate along one NYC bus route before and after implementation of bus lanes, signal priority, and free fares / fare zones. "In an ideal world, all these investments could cut about 40 percent off the time of a trip."

Several bus routes use Merivale Road, including routes 80, 53, 189, 117 and 187. Painting two outer lanes red can cut trip times in half during peak traffic, making transit faster, more reliable and enabling ridership. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

Spoke with the Centretown Buzz about the (not so great) proposal for bus lanes on Bank Street, and the need to put people before parking. centretownbuzz.ca/2025/10/be-b...

Free coffee is nice and all, but let's get serious: proper dedicated bus lanes on Bank St could bring three times more people per hour to the area than mixed traffic does. Street parking will never provide these kinds of benefits for local shops. obj.ca/glebe-bia-br...

How do you move 1000 people into a city centre? 1 train, 20 buses or 650 personal vehicles (with a LOT of parking required!) HT @davidloisuned.bsky.social for the Spanish translation of one of my favourite graphics originally from Sydney. #CityMakingMath

Another reminder that the city is doing an open house TOMORROW about bus lanes on Bank Street. It will be at Blessed Sacrament Parish, 194 Fourth Avenue from 6:30 - 8:30 pm. Come help support 24/7 bus lanes on Bank! Info at the link below. engage.ottawa.ca/bank-street-...

It can't be stressed enough: this kind of city is MORE accessible, with MORE choices for everyone. Reducing the number of cars driven by people who don't need to drive leaves more space for mobility vehicles and reduces journey times. Cars are expensive!

"When transit is underfunded, it affects housing development, traffic congestion, affordability, and even job access [...] even if you don't personally take the train or bus, you still benefit from public transit."

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.

You’re invited to an open house about the Bank Street Active Transportation and Transit Priority Feasibility Study on Wednesday, September 24 at 7pm at Blessed Sacrament Parish, 194 Fourth Avenue. Learn more: https://bit.ly/46bquXL

"What if there were a technology that could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and environmental degradation, while improving health, reducing social inequality and boosting the economy? There is, and this month it turns 200." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Routes 6, 7 and 12 continue to see the highest number of trips cancelled. We don't have enough buses. Only 520 out of OC Transpo's 735 buses are on the road at any time; the rest are in the shop. Replacing old buses and expanding the fleet should be a priority. ottawacitizen.com/news/oc-tran...

The fundamental issue facing OC Transpo is that riders, rightly, don't think the service is worth paying for. Late buses, longer commutes, and a world class train down every few weeks. Fining people $260 for refusing to pay the $4 fare won't fix that. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...

Transit-oriented development isn't just urban planning - it's social justice. Good transit access should be a right, not a luxury good.

Without very good transit, there will be very bad traffic. The city's own projections into 2046 show high population growth concentrated in the suburbs. That's a lot of cars on the road without a good transit network (i.e. a frequent, functional LRT with reliable local bus connections).

A very important step on the road to free transit for those who need it the most. What will be crucial for accessibility is an easy to navigate application process, which Ottawa's low income EquiPass is not. www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/art...