Free Transit Ottawa 🇨🇦

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.

Opinion | This Is How Mamdani Can Pay for Free Buses

"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

Bus ridership on Edmonton Transit returns to pre-pandemic levels: city - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca Edmonton bus ridership reached 100 per cent of 2019 pre-pandemic levels in January 2023, averaging 1.2 million rides per week, the city said.

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.

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

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.

Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.

"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.

Ottawa taxpayers facing 3.75 per cent property tax hike, 2.5 per cent OC Transpo fare increase in 2026 Ottawa taxpayers are facing a 3.75 per cent property tax increase for City of Ottawa services next year, as well as higher user fees for transit, recreation and water services.

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...

Can you elaborate on why they had to? We are digging into this context presently!

"The Brampton case clearly shows there is no such thing as tailoring service to demand — demand is not fixed. The phenomenon of induced demand is as real for transit as it is for highways: If you provide a more attractive service, more people will use it. If you cut service, riders will disappear."

How Did This Suburb Figure Out Mass Transit? Transit ridership is off the charts in Brampton, Ontario, despite its typical low-density suburban layout. Here’s how the city got residents to get on the bus.

"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...

Tables showing delays for the 6 and 7 on Bank street in the Glebe. Showing extremely large delays outside of the "peak" hours identified by the city. These are when the parking lanes are in effect, and cause buses to have to merge in and out of the parking lane at every stop.

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

Tell Ford to Back Off Our Bike and Bus Lanes!

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

Free public transport pilot scheme announced for major Scottish city A FREE public transport trial is to take place in a major Scottish city early next year

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.

Why is traffic so bad on Highway 417 in Ottawa? Here's everything you need to know about how construction, unreliable transit, and returning to the office have made getting to work worse.

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."

Ottawa eyes bus-only lanes on Merivale Road A report for the public works and infrastructure committee meeting on Thursday recommends councillors approve the statement of work for the environmental assessment study to place bus lanes on Merival...

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...

Glebe BIA brews up innovative way of increasing foot traffic to area businesses Lucky coffee lovers may get their morning cup for free this month as the Glebe BIA covers the cost as a way to promote local cafés.

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...

The math in graphic form, in Spanish

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."

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.

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.

Collage of a street sign for Bank Street and Fifth Avenue and a bus on bank street.

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