Council looks to move away from Stage 3 light rail with bus rapid transit

So tuck into some Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast, grab a coffee and settle in for the latest Insider newsletter.

There is finally a timeline for when ‘New Ways to Bus’ will be introduced in Ottawa. 

At a technical briefing on Oct. 3, transit officials said Lines 2 and 4 of the light rail Trillium Line could open in mid to late November. While a few bus routes would automatically change to connect commuters to the stations, the entire route revamp would not occur until sometime in April 2025.  

Why not sooner? OC Transpo general Manager René Amilcar said they didn’t want to make drastic changes to the schedule ahead of the winter route changes. 

“We don't recommend to launch New Ways to Bus in the middle of the winter for a lot of reasons, good reasons,” said Amilcar. “Five thousand stops will be changed. We need to communicate a lot to our customers.” 

Councillors are mixed on this decision. Some want to see the new bus routes implemented sooner to deal with the surge in demand that came with federal office workers returning to the office three days a week. That has led to overcrowded buses which have passed by stops, unable to pick up more passengers. Others, particularly in suburban areas, said they don’t mind because many of the 200 series express routes are being axed when the service is changed. 

The revamp of the route network was designed at a time when the downtown core was still dead and people were working from home. An emphasis was put on having commuters get around their neighbourhoods better — something the system has never been good at — as opposed to going downtown. That was, in short, due to changing travel patterns, which are shifting again. OC Transpo doesn’t have the resources to do both. 

More connection route transfers coming to Nepean 

Perhaps one of the wards with the biggest changes is in Knoxdale-Merivale. The popular Route 86, which used to run from Baseline Station down Meadowlands Dr to Fisher Ave, and then to Tunney’s Pasture, will now begin on Antares Dr near Colonnade, go down Prince of Wales Dr to Fisher Ave, and then up to Tunney’s. 

Route 111, which began at Baseline Station and ran down Viewmount and Chesterton before finally reaching Billings Bridge or Carleton University, will now run directly down Meadowlands — picking up a portion of the former Route 86 — before ending at Billings. Commuters to Carleton will now need to transfer to the logout trail train at Mooney’s Bay Station. Service from Viewmount will be removed and replaced by a new Route 112. Service from Chesterton will be removed and replaced by Route 189.

Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Sean Devine said the route changes will bring a diminishment in service but is cautiously optimistic that OC Transpo is right when they say it will bring a more reliable service. He had to fight to get service restored to Chesterton after it was initially axed in route planning. 

“I’ve got two schools on Chesterton plus a lot of low-income housing and I’ve even got a big seniors housing there. Having public transit on Chesterton is important for these reasons,” said Devine. “What we now have is there will be a bus called the 189 which will start in the Colonnade Industrial Park and it will go to Baseline Station. That bus route was originally designed to commute OC Transpo employees from their Collonade depot to Baseline. We had them modify the route to include Chesterton. It will run frequently enough.”

While good news, those commuters will almost certainly need to transfer to another bus to get where they are going. 

“I think one thing that Ottawa maybe is experiencing is historically we’ve had a transit system that sent the vast majority of its users to one place — downtown for work or studies the University of Ottawa. That afforded us the opportunity to have many bus routes that would go to small pockets and a lot of people got used to having very frequent service with no transfers. That’s no longer sustainable here,” said Devine. 

It’s not all bad news, though. More remote areas like Pine Glen and Country Place in Knoxdale-Merivale will benefit from a new bus route. Service is also coming to West Hunt Club — which surprisingly had almost no service until now. 

A new Route 116 will run from Baseline Station down Hunt Club Rd to Greensboro Station near South Keys. It will bring commuters to a major shopping hub that will also be a connecting point for light rail.  

What Devine would have liked to see was a bus route that would go down Greenbank Roadd from Barrhaven to Iris Station, which will eventually be part of the Confederation Line LRT expansion opening in 2026 or 2027.

“There are so many routes that take you from Fallowfield along Woodroffe downtown, but there is not a single bus right now that will take you from Greenbank to Barrhaven. You may want to travel from that neighbourhood to the Ikea. If you live in Craig Henry you may want to travel to Barrhaven for the movie theater or shopping,” said Devine. 

OC Transpo says they will consider the option, but not until ridership is up. 

“The frustrating thing is how are they going to measure that demand? Will it be people standing on the street shaking their fists saying they wish there was a bus here?,” asked Devine. “People are going to drive along Greenbank. I think the way you show demand is you put the route in place and see if it gets used. 

Many concerns for Bells Corners 

In the neighbouring College ward, Coun. Laine Johnson said she has many concerns for how her Bells Corners residents are supposed to get around the city. Service was already cut in that community after federal office workers stopped commuting downtown, and will be facing another reduction in service this April. 

Service should get better when the Confederation Line extends to Moodie Drive, but even then, it’s located in a somewhat inconvenient spot for Bells Corners residents. 

In addition to that, the future nearby light rail station that won't be open for a few more years is located in a somewhat inconvenient place. 

“Bells Corners is on the south side of the Queensway while the LRT station they are supposed to intersect at Moodie is on the North side. You’re going to be asking people to go over the Queensway to get onto a train,” said Johnson. ”When you’re crossing the Queensway, how are you doing that? Are you walking? Are you driving to a park and ride over there? Or are you going to just get in the Queensway and keep going. We need to make an incentive attractive. That’s not going to come by increasing fares or unreliable service for Bell’s Corners. We might need to be a little more creative.”

Johnson said the biggest concerns she’s hearing from residents over the route changes are that they will need to walk longer — particularly to Baseline Station. The number 50 will be getting axed, a milk route bus that benefited residents in the Navaho Drive area.  

Route 53 will replace the corridor between Baseline, Clyde and Laperriere Ave. Route 81 will run along Iris to Navaho Drive, Maitland Avenue, and then Clyde Avenue to Baseline Road.

A win for Stittsville 

Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower, who also chairs the transit committee, has a more optimistic view of the transit changes. As the Lookout reported in the last Insider edition, there will be about 75,000 fewer service hours yearly come April. That counts for about 3.5 per cent of the 2.111 million service hours seen in 2024. 

While many councillors are painting that as a reduction in service, Gower said that’s not entirely true. He said that around 62,000 hours are being added for O-Train Lines 2 & 4. 

In Stittsville specifically, Gower said a new Route 163 bus will run east to west and connect to a part of the village which has no service currently. 

“It connects east to west and retail on Stittsville Main Street. It goes through Kanata to the Hazeldean Library, Glen Cairn Pool, then goes to Centrum,” he said. “OC Transpo is also going to increase weekend service on Route 167. That’s a good change. They are improving rush hour routes to make them more efficient. It will be faster to get into the office and home. Also, Routes 161 and 162 are going from 30 minutes to 15 minutes for parts of the day.”

Gower said this would better connect Stittsville, which is growing in population by the day. The community has almost doubled in the last decade. To accommodate these changes Route 162 will be scrapped entirely due to low demand, with those service hours going to more populated areas. 

TRANSIT

A push for bus rapid transit over rail

Is it time to cancel Phase 3 of light rail? Council is mulling over that decision, and the answer seems likely — for now anyway. 

OC Transpo is strapped for cash. Last year it was announced that 25-year projections are down $3.7 billion — more than $100 million per year. Around that same time, city staff did not make a compelling case for the Phase 3 project, saying it would cost an estimated $64 million per year to operate. It would bring only an estimated two per cent increase in ridership, increasing funds by $5 million annually.

The price tag of the Phase 3 project is an estimated $6.5 billion, but that’s an outdated figure that would almost certainly be higher today. The extension to Barrhaven alone would cost at least $4 billion. When the project was first tabled, it was $3.5 billion.

So how did we get here? 

Let’s start with some brief history 

Subscribe to unlock the rest. And get 25% off the first year of your membership.