Michael Tay
"For people to choose transit, it has to be reliable, convenient and affordable. My first priority would be improving reliability: realistic schedules, sufficient operators and vehicles, preventative maintenance, and clear performance measures so residents can see whether service is actually improving.
We also need to work directly with the people who actually use transit. When we make decisions about routes, schedules or service changes, riders need meaningful opportunities to tell us what is working and what is not.
Accountability matters as well. We hold other City services accountable when they are consistently unreliable, and transit should be no different. We need to understand why targets are being missed, communicate that openly and take action to correct persistent problems.
I also support protecting affordable transit options and improving connections between buses, the O-Train and neighbourhood routes. Transit cannot simply be something we tell people to use. We have to make it an option people can reasonably choose because it gets them where they need to go, reliably and affordably."
Dillon Anderson
"To make OC Transpo a genuinely attractive, competitive alternative to driving across Ottawa, we must abandon patchwork fixes and focus on three fundamental pillars: day-to-day reliability, smart frequency distribution, and structural financial discipline.1. Restoring Baseline Reliability: Frequency and affordability matter little if a bus simply never arrives. Chronic cancellations and ghost buses destroy public confidence. Prioritizing Fleet Maintenance & Workforce Support: We must ensure OC Transpo has adequate staffing, retention frameworks for mechanics, and strict adherence to maintenance schedules so that scheduled trips are actually delivered (targeting a true 99.5% service delivery standard). Prudent Asset Management: Rather than stretching our resources over low-return capital expansions, every available transit dollar must be directed toward stabilizing day-to-day bus availability and network health.2. Optimizing Frequency Where Demand ExistsData-Driven Network Alignment: Frequency must be concentrated along high-volume corridors and vital feeder routes connecting neighborhoods to the O-Train network. Seamless Interconnectivity: Riders are discouraged when transfers between buses and trains involve long, unpredictable waits. Aligning scheduling control systems and ensuring reliable headways on core routes makes multi-modal commuting seamless.3. Ensuring Long-Term Affordability & Fiscal Sustainability Holding the Line on Fare Hikes: Punitive fare increases push riders away and worsen transit adoption. To keep transit affordable for working families, students, and seniors, City Hall must pursue structural funding solutions—such as pressing for fair senior levels of operational support and the provincial upload of regional transit responsibilities—rather than balancing the municipal transit deficit on the backs of everyday riders. Maximizing Efficiency: Protecting targeted affordability programs (like low-income pass structures) while optimizing underperforming routes ensures public funds are working efficiently to attract maximum ridership."
Nicholas Golle
"OC Transpo literally knows what they need to do. They have a sophisticated business intelligence backend for data driven decisions. Their constraint is financial and . I will make the case across council that OC transpo is a public utility which benefits the entire city, even car owners and the city as a whole - there's a whole set of arguments here that are coherent regarding scalable infrastructure, physical constraints on road width, throughput per roadspace, etc.
So. First things first. Do the work to make that case to have council pass that clear statement of intent/decision principle. At that point it becomes a technical problem of OC Transpo to solve, with council's role to be holding them accountable on demonstrable progress.
Secondly. We need to design our densification policy to incentivize transit use. Densification with lower # of parking spaces on transit nodes. To be honest, this city is already doing this. But this feeds deeper into cycling, pedestrians, mobility, and transit. As properly planned density creates the design pressures for these other forms of transport to be non-negotiables."
Ariel Troster
"Increase off-peak frequency of the LRT, build more dedicated bus lanes, invest in more frequent service, allow same-day booking for ParaTranspo."