Cutting Ottawa's LRT Service Doesn't Make Sense

Yesterday the City of Ottawa announced that it will be reducing its daytime LRT service from approx. 5 minute frequencies to 10 minute frequencies. This is not a smart move in my opinion, for reasons outlined below:

Penny-wise, Pound-foolish

From a purely cost perspective, this move makes absolutely no sense. The Stage 2 expansion of Ottawa’s LRT will likely end up costing over $5 billion. Although it’s not official, a leaked City of Ottawa page had the cost savings of these frequency cuts listed at 1.6 million dollars. The savings are so small based on the cost of the system that I wonder why the city is even bothering considering the pushback they are likely to get.

One of the big reason for upgrading from a BRT to a light rail system is it typically allows for much better frequencies. With the following move, Ottawa is paying the huge up-front and capital costs of a train with none of the frequency and convenience benefits during the day.

Declining Ridership

To make financial matters worse, this move will almost certainly lead to ridership declining even further. Ottawa’s transit ridership is only at about 70% of its pre-pandemic levels.

Cities like Calgary have seen ridership grow since COVID by investing in transit and increasing frequencies. Director Sharon Fleming even told Global News: “Calgary Transit customers have responded well to our service and safety investments over the past year,” If Ottawa wants more transit revenue and better ridership, it should be doing the same.

One of the best parts about a frequent transit system is you don’t have to worry about transfers or checking stop times because you know the next ride is always coming. With these cuts to frequency, Ottawa’s systems gets considerably less convenient, and will almost certainly have more people opting to drive instead of waiting longer for the train.

Return to Office and School

With the federal government increasing the return to in-person work, now is not the time for further cuts to the transit system. With more potential riders, it would make sense to increase frequencies to make transit more convenient and to instill confidence in the system.

For students the changes will have even more impacts, as many classes start or end during the hours of the frequency cuts. Students provide a huge amount of funding to OC Transpo through their student passes, and yet their level of service is being reduced.

Losing Confidence in a Faltering System

An example of how bad LRT frequencies already can be.

The upcoming cuts to the bus system will reduce bus operating hours by 74,000 hours. Line 2 LRT has been delayed by over 2 years and still has no set start date. Line 1 was just closed for 2 weeks for maintenance, at the same time that Highway 417 was closed through downtown.

Transit riders in Ottawa desperately need a win. They need to be shown that this city still cares about riders and is willing to invest in making riding public transit in Ottawa easier.

Unfortunately, by cutting the LRT’s frequency, the City of Ottawa seems to be doing the exact opposite.

If you care about this issue, please consider contacting your local councillor to reverse the service cuts to Ottawa’s LRT system.

Note: I typically to publish about once a week. This is an important and timely issue that I deem worthy of an extra email this week.