OC Transpo will offer two free fare weekends as part of a package of reliability measures and service enhancements approved by Ottawa city council this week.
Free Weekends to Rebuild Trust
Council approved a motion from Capital Coun. Shawn Menard on June 10 that will provide a free “familiarization” weekend on Sept. 26 and 27, when service demand is expected to rise with the return to school. A second free weekend will be offered at a future date, once the LRT’s east extension to Orléans has been completed.
Menard’s motion, seconded by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, referenced the LRT’s reduced capacity after a spalling issue was detected in January, along with OC Transpo’s aging bus fleet that led to reliability issues, frequent breakdowns, and numerous cancelled trips over the winter that left riders “stranded at bus stops in the cold.”
Cost and Scope of the Plan
The two free weekends will cost about $900,000. The plan does not include refunds or future discounts for transit riders, which had been proposed to compensate for OC Transpo’s poor service.
The motion calls for the city to purchase two new articulated diesel buses to improve reliability and modernize its fleet at a cost of $3.6 million, along with two six-metre Para Transpo buses that will cost $480,000. Para Transpo service hours will be extended on Friday and Saturday evenings, which will cost $108,000 per year.
The city will also spend $2 million as its share of costs to install heat tracing on the LRT’s overhead catenary system, which powers the trains, to avoid multi-day shutdowns due to freezing rain. The package will also deploy “a suite of transit priority measures” requested by councillors, up to $1 million “in a way that maximizes transit benefits at the earliest opportunity.”
Recent Improvements to Transit
OC Transpo general manager Rick Leary and senior staff highlighted a number of improvements to bus and train service, maintenance, and staffing in a presentation to the June 11 transit committee.
Double-car trains returned to the LRT’s Line 1 on June 8, and Leary said the transit authority is “well-positioned” to handle large-capacity crowds expected for Canada Day and the summer festival season. Transit will be free on Canada Day.
Line 1 had been running single-car trains after spalling was detected in the cartridge bearing assemblies in the trains’ wheel hubs, but Leary said a number of those trains have been repaired and returned to service. He reported “positive results” from a new onboard condition monitoring system that is designed to detect any anomalies with the trains, and said an analysis is underway to determine the root cause of the cartridge bearing assemblies’ premature failure.
Leary said he had no update, however, on the rail line’s long-delayed east extension. “When all the fleet is fully equipped with the smart tracker system … then we’ll announce when we’re going to be doing the trial running and then picking a date after certification for (extending the rail) service,” Leary said.
