Suburban commutes and transit

Good morning! 

I had my first pumpkin spice latte of the season at Starbucks today, which can only mean one thing: fall is almost here.

Sure, it’s still August. The days are warm, the trees are mostly still green and I’m not quite ready to accept that summer is winding down. But in reality, September is around the corner — and with it comes the return of students, routines and, unfortunately, a whole lot more traffic.

This fall could be particularly rough. Thousands of federal workers are spending more time back in the office. In years past, you might have expected public transit to absorb some of that growth. But OC Transpo is carrying only about 67 per cent of the riders it did before the pandemic, as long commutes, missed buses, and reliability concerns have pushed some former riders toward their cars.

The solution for many years has been the third and final phase of LRT. But there doesn’t appear to be an appetite — or the business case — for that to happen anytime soon.  So what should happen in the meantime? 

As it turns out, the answer could lie with buses and reversing to an old model that has worked in the past: bus rapid transit. 

Let’s get to it!

— Charlie Senack, Ottawa Lookout managing editor

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WEATHER

Wednesday: 25 🌡️ 14 | 🌤️

Thursday: 24 🌡️ 16 | 🌧️

Friday: 21 🌡️ 9 | 🌤️

By Charlie Senack.

For years, Ottawa’s answer to getting rapid transit farther into its suburbs has been Stage 3 LRT. There has been a promise that it would shorten commute times, reduce operating costs, and improve the ridership experience. But almost seven years after the first phase's opening, it’s yet to prove those results.

Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley is no longer convinced the city should wait for it to be a saving grace.

With thousands of federal workers spending more time in the office, students returning to school, and Ottawa’s roads preparing for the annual September surge, Hubley is calling for more immediate transit improvements in Kanata. Longer term, he says it may be time for the city to seriously consider bus rapid transit, or BRT, rather than waiting years for trains to arrive.

“I see big advantages to the BRT because you could have it up and running within a couple of years for significantly less money than it would cost for an LRT, and a much shorter time frame and better service,” Hubley told the Lookout.

Stage 2 of the Confederation Line is under construction toward Moodie Drive in the west. Still, its opening has been pushed back, and the July 1 flooding caused significant damage to portions of the unfinished western extension. Stage 3, which would take trains farther into Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven, remains unfunded and years, if not decades, away.

In the meantime, OC Transpo is struggling to rebuild ridership.

City figures released this week show conventional transit ridership averaged about 67 per cent of pre-pandemic levels during the first half of 2026. OC Transpo is forecasting a $12.35-million year-end deficit, driven largely by passenger revenue coming in below budget.

Hubley wants OC Transpo to establish a shuttle service similar to the R1 replacement service used when the Confederation Line is unavailable, running roughly along the future Stage 3 corridor and giving Kanata residents another option before the western LRT extension opens.

“We should be trying to help people commute now while we figure this out,” Hubley said. “So if there’s going to be a delay because of poor design or whatever, I think we should be running an extra service and extra shuttle service in here to help people and mitigate the damage to their commutes.”

He suggested it could initially require only a handful of additional trips during the morning and afternoon rush.

Hubley remains supportive of LRT and said rapid rail eventually needs to serve more of Ottawa. But with Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven still outside the rail network, he believes the city should be open to another technology.

Hubley estimates a BRT expansion could cost in the range of $500 million, though that figure has not been established through a city business case. He contrasted that with the multibillion-dollar cost of completing Stage 3.

A 2023 city presentation estimated extending LRT to Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven would cost about $6.5 billion. The same analysis estimated the extensions would add approximately $64 million annually in operating costs while bringing in about $5 million in additional fare revenue and increasing system-wide ridership by roughly two per cent.

The project cannot proceed without substantial funding from the federal and provincial governments. During his last provincial election campaign, Ontario Premier Doug Ford remained open to getting it built one day — but no timelines or firm commitments were announced.

Hubley also argues that buses bring flexibility. Ottawa’s current Stage 3 plan would extend the Confederation Line west from Moodie toward Kanata and Stittsville. But a train can only serve communities immediately surrounding its stations.

“If you have a BRT, then you can be right in the middle of the Kanata tech park. You could go to the Hazeldean Mall, for example, and then have some short commute buses that would go into each of the neighbourhoods and bring everybody out to the mall,” Hubley said. “Same with the Canadian Tire Centre.”

Long before shovels were in the ground on the Confederation Line, Ottawa built much of its international transit reputation around buses.

Transit advocate David Jeanes has watched that evolution for more than 50 years. He became involved in Ottawa transit issues after returning to the city in 1974 to work at Bell Northern Research. Without a car, the transit and history buff relied on buses to commute to Moodie Drive and became involved in consultations as Ottawa developed what would become the Transitway.

The city’s 1974 Official Plan called for a rapid-transit network but did not initially dictate whether it would use buses or trains. Subsequent studies compared the technologies and concluded a bus-based system offered several advantages for the sprawling national capital: it was cheaper to build and operate, could be constructed piece by piece, required fewer transfers and allowed buses to leave dedicated corridors and continue directly into suburban neighbourhoods. 

Jeanes recalls Transitway proponents arguing Ottawa would not need to consider rail until the region approached one million residents. At the time, it was nowhere close. Ottawa-Carleton’s population stood at about 520,500 in 1976. 

Other Canadian cities were making the opposite choice. Edmonton opened its first LRT line in 1978, becoming the first North American city of fewer than one million people to build a modern light-rail system. Calgary followed with the CTrain in 1981.

Ottawa instead doubled down on buses. Its rapid-transit experiment initially grew out of express routes in the 1970s. Dedicated and reserved bus lanes allowed suburban buses to bypass traffic before the first sections of the purpose-built Transitway opened in 1983.

Rather than constructing the entire network at once, Ottawa built it outward over the years. The result became one of North America’s most closely watched transit systems.

A later U.S. Federal Transit Administration study found that Ottawa’s approach helped establish a pattern that was subsequently adopted by other BRT systems. Academic research described the Transitway as having transformed Ottawa into “one of the most transit-friendly centres in North America.” 

When Brisbane, Australia, opened its South East Busway in 2000 and 2001, transportation researchers explicitly described it as a descendant of Ottawa’s Transitway. A 2002 study comparing the two systems called Brisbane’s network the “state-of-the-art progeny” of Ottawa’s mature busway system. It said Brisbane’s busway initiatives were modelled on the Canadian capital. 

Similar BRT networks later appeared in suburban Toronto. Mississauga built a grade-separated bus-only Transitway through the centre of the city, while York Region developed Viva rapidways using dedicated median lanes. Both remain in use today.

Ottawa, meanwhile, eventually ran into the limits of its own creation—congestion downtown. 

“You had enormous bus traffic jams, sometimes stretching all the way from Elgin Street to Bronson with just solid buses all the way, just not moving,” Jeanes recalled. “So you could actually walk across downtown faster than the bus was going.”

In the late 1980s, the former Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton studied the idea of taking buses underground. One proposal envisioned twin tunnels beneath Albert and Slater streets, beginning near Bronson Avenue and emerging east of the Rideau Canal, with underground stations around Lyon, Bank, Metcalfe and Nicholas.

Seattle opened a downtown transit tunnel in 1990 specifically for buses. It used specialized vehicles capable of operating underground to avoid diesel exhaust. The tunnel was later rebuilt to accommodate rail and to carry buses and light-rail trains together between 2009 and 2019, and today it is used exclusively by trains. 

Looking to the future of Ottawa’s transit system, Jeanes sees potential for a hybrid system, with rail handling the highest passenger volumes through central Ottawa. At the same time, rapid buses connect it to distant suburbs.

But BRT also comes with tradeoffs. Buses require significantly more operators to carry the same number of passengers as trains, thereby increasing labour costs. 

“The point is that you need to put an effort into making your overall transit system work seamlessly so that people are not complaining about how inconvenient and uncomfortable and delay-prone and expensive and everything the trip is,” Jeanes said. “It really needs to be planned so that end-to-end journeys work well for people.”

The city of Ottawa still has a vision for bus rapid transit. The most substantial is the Baseline Road BRT corridor, a roughly 14-kilometre route planned between Bayshore and Heron stations.

The approved design calls for dedicated bus-only lanes, generally running in the centre of the road, along parts of Holly Acres Road, Richmond Road, Baseline Road and Heron Road. About 25 new stations are planned, alongside new sidewalks and cycling infrastructure. 

The city reaffirmed the project’s importance during its latest Transportation Master Plan process. 

Carling Avenue provides another example, although its proposed system is closer to enhanced transit-priority BRT than Ottawa’s old fully grade-separated Transitway. The project has stalled for years. 

City plans call for dedicated or reserved bus lanes and other transit-priority measures between Lincoln Fields and Bronson Avenue.

March Road remains identified as a BRT corridor through Kanata North, and the city recently updated its environmental assessment and functional design for the proposed Kanata North Transitway. The latest transportation planning work envisions a median rapid transit line along March Road, potentially providing the kind of connection to the technology park that Hubley says Stage 3 LRT would struggle to offer. 

Across the city, Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo also remains a supporter of light rail, which he believes will one day reach his community, but for now, he wants to see the investment in buses. 

Barrhaven already has a Transitway that connects Algonquin College to Marketplace Station. There is also a dedicated bus infrastructure through Chapman Mills.

Lo said the problem isn’t necessarily a lack of infrastructure — It’s the service operating on it.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people that it takes upwards of an hour and a half to get to Tunney’s Pasture. Buses are crowded. Buses are leaving people behind and late in some cases,” Lo said.

Barrhaven was also largely left out of some recent OC Transpo service additions, Lo said.

“It’s frustrating. It’s not fair. Residents here pay the same fares, pay the same property tax levies, and we really got nothing,” he said. 

The opening of the Confederation Line extension to Algonquin Station will eventually change Barrhaven’s commute again. OC Transpo currently intends to extend local Barrhaven routes north to Algonquin, eliminating the need for many passengers to transfer at Fallowfield before reaching the rail service.

Lo said following through on that plan will be critical.

“If that Fallowfield transfer remains after that extension to Algonquin opens, you’re not going to attract any new riders that way,” he said.

Barrhaven also sits between Algonquin Station to the north and Limebank Station on Line 2 to the east. Lo believes stronger bus connections to both could provide the community with substantially better transit without waiting for Stage 3.

Despite questions about its cost, Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is not proposing to abandon Stage 3.

As part of his re-election campaign, Sutcliffe has pledged to seek federal and provincial commitments to extend LRT to Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven.

But his transit platform also embraces BRT, proposing investments in the Baseline Road, Southwest Transitway and Kanata North corridors alongside 200 additional buses by 2030 and 250 new drivers and mechanics.

For commuters, the more immediate test arrives in September. Lo said he expects traffic and transit delays as students return and more workers commute into the city.

“I don’t think things will collapse, but I don’t think it’ll be great either,” he said. “It’s easier to lose that confidence than to gain it. And so it’s going to take more time exponentially to gain that confidence back than it took to lose that confidence.”

Jeanes has watched Ottawa’s transit system go through cycles of growth and decline for five decades. He remembers when worsening traffic helped make public transit an attractive alternative.

Today, Highway 417 can be congested during the morning and afternoon rushes, midday, and on weekends. Yet that congestion has not produced the shift back to transit he would expect.

“I think that, as driving becomes more problematic, transit should be relieving the pressure and taking people off the congested roads,” Jeanes said. “And I don’t really see that happening at the moment.”

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$28.9 million

That’s how much Ottawa’s mayor and city councillors spent on office expenses in this term of council, which includes staff salaries, advertising, websites, and external services. [CTV]

🚌 OC Transpo is facing a multi-million-dollar deficit due to low ridership that has yet to meet pre-pandemic levels, but the City of Ottawa says it is anticipating the provincial government will be contributing funding this year by uploading the O-Train system. Read more. [CTV]

🚔 Ottawa police say they are investigating the death of 27-year-old Ottawa woman Kesi Fevrier as a femicide. Police say her body was discovered in a Lowertown home on Saturday. Read more. [CBC]

💧 The federal government has pledged $30 million for Ottawa’s wastewater treatment plant, promising the investment will help with climate resiliency and Ottawa’s growing population. Read more ($) [Ottawa Citizen]

❗The Ottawa Police Service says it is investigating after loose pills were discovered scattered in three east-end parks; reports from two parks were made on Saturday, and officers have since found more pills at nearby parks, recovering more than 100 pills of various types. Read more. [CBC]

🚍 OC Transpo is looking to keep its aging bus fleet – some of which are more than 16 years old – on the road. The City is aiming to refurbish articulated buses in order to keep them in service and accommodate an expected boost in ridership this fall. Read more. [CTV]

🏠 New home sales in Ottawa are up 50 per cent this summer compared with last year, with 420 new homes sold in Ottawa in July — up from 274 sold in July of 2025. Read more. [CTV]

🍛 A Toronto-based restaurant group, Legend of Spice, is looking to enter the Ottawa market with plans to open a restaurant at the former McDonald’s location on Rideau Street. Read more ($) [OBJ]

🏢 A local realty group is considering converting a 16-storey office tower at 85 Albert St. to a residential complex. Read more ($) [OBJ]

🚨 Ottawa police are seeking the public’s assistance in locating a missing 13-year-old girl. Nakita Morris-Copenance is known to frequent the downtown area. Read more. [CTV]

🏳️‍🌈 Three of Ottawa’s leading mayoral candidates – Mark Sutcliffe, Jeff Leiper and Neil Saravanamuttoo — have announced they will be marching in the Capital Pride parade; candidate Alex Lawson says he will not. Read more. [CBC]

💼 Mayoral candidate Jeff Leiper says he will reverse the City of Ottawa’s return-to-office mandate for city workers if elected. Read more ($) [Ottawa Citizen]

🚗 Incumbent Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says he will boost funding for rural roads and make progress on a ring road if he is re-elected as mayor. He unveiled his 14-point rural platform as part of his re-election campaign on Monday. Read more. [CTV]

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On Aug. 27, experience SoundScape, a new, free immersive music and arts festival hosted on Ottawa’s Plaza Bridge, featuring Puppy Sierna, OK Naledi and Tone Cluster. 

Jeevan Jyoti Performing Arts takes the stage at the Shenkman Arts Centre on Aug. 29, presenting Adikavi – The First Poet, a musical dance ballet dedicated to the life of the 15th-century saint-poet of Gujarati literature.

Check out The Collective Stage, a talent showcase held at the Arts Court on Aug. 28 featuring live performances from local artists, including singers, magicians, instrumentalists, poets and more.

Head to Art House on Aug. 29 for Drag On The Patio, featuring Freya Frostbite, Abysskiss, Sophia Sapphire and host Eden Moore for a high-energy performance.

Beginning Sept. 4, the National Gallery of Canada presents works by six artists from across Canada who have been shortlisted for the 2026 Sobey Art Award. This year’s artists represent a dynamic cross-section of contemporary visual practice – exhibited until Jan. 3, 2027.

The Wall Space Gallery welcomes a solo exhibition of works by Ottawa-based artist Ariane Beauchamp beginning on Sept. 12.

Catch a final glimmer of summer at Santini Gallery, which is showing summery works featuring open skies, vibrant palettes and beaches from artists including Adele Webster, Erik Hobbins, Angie Barrados, Julie Bell and more until the end of September.

At the Mayfair this week, catch Two Pianos (French), The Little Mermaid (1989), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Dutch and English, 2001), Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, Sheep in the Box (Japanese), Franz (Czech, German, Yiddish), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Bury the Devil, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), All About Eve (1950), and Last Summer.

Meanwhile, the Bytown is screening Tony, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Compostelle (French), Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), and a special showing of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) for Drunken Cinema.

Sam Krüger comes to Avant-Garde Bar on 27 August. The Montreal folk singer-songwriter blends drama and comedy across songs of love, emotional manipulation, and overindulgence. Tickets $20.

Mimi O'Bonsawin plays Red Bird on 28 August. The W8banaki and French Canadian roots singer-songwriter celebrates the release day of her new album. Tickets $28.

Capital City Stompers play Art House Cafe on 28 August. The Ottawa trad jazz quartet continue their popular residency, bringing their fun take on early New Orleans jazz. Tickets $15

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus play Overflow Brewing on 29 August. The Florida post-hardcore icons celebrate 20 years of their multi-platinum debut Don't You Fake It. Tickets $48.

The ReTreads rock Rainbow Bistro on 29 August. The Ottawa punk supergroup bring their new album to the Byward Market's legendary stage. Tickets $15.

Listings for music shows are provided by Ottawa Gigs, the best place to discover live music in Ottawa. Check out Ottawagigs.ca for full listings across the city.

When's the last time you went on a date? You can get dinner. Or walk around a new neighbourhood. Get ice cream. Grab a movie at the Bytown 🍿

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By Sarah MacFarlane-Youngdale. Originally published March 12, 2026.

In its largest project to date, Habitat for Humanity Greater Ottawa is building affordable townhomes in Nepean, all of which will be made available for ownership to local families in need. But after only one week, the organization was forced to pause applications, not due to any issue, but because of a surge in demand and interest.

On Jan. 29, the organization opened applications for the homes. On Feb. 9, they were forced to close the portal and pause the applications due to an overwhelming response. 

More than 1,100 people submitted an expression of interest. Of those, 550 filled out pre-qualification forms. In total, more than 250 people were invited to submit a full application. The development has the capacity for only 33 households.

Read the story.

Story by Capital Eats food and drink editor Ralf Joneikies

Ottawans love their Vietnamese food, so there’s always room for more. 

Enter Ho Guom from Montreal. This is the aspiring chain's third location and has taken the spot once occupied by Zak’s at the corner of Churchill and Richmond Rd.

The emphasis here is on Northern Vietnamese cuisine, although the majority of dishes are recognizable from most other such restaurants in Ottawa.

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It’s that time of year when the sun still shines, the canal remains unfrozen, and the leaves remind us that time is passing.