The pilot project will run in places that aren’t well served by public transportation or have few people using it
This fall, OC Transpo wants to start a pilot project for on-demand transit on the weekends, just like other Canadian cities have done.
Ottawa’s transit commission heard Thursday that the plan is to use spare Para Transpo minibuses to run in two or three areas that either don’t have much transit service or don’t have many people taking it.
Claire O’Donnell, the program manager for service strategy, said that riders will be able to schedule a ride through an app, a website, or the OC Transpo call center.
O’Donnell told the commission that if the city bought more cars, the program could eventually run every day and in more neighborhoods.
“Because we’re still in the early stages of planning, we’ll have more information at a future meeting of the transit commission,” she said.
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On-demand transit has worked well in other places as a way to get buses to places that “can’t support multiple, frequent corridors of service,” said Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo.
“It actually improves service for a lot of people who live in places like the suburbs,” Lo told CBC Radio’s Ottawa MorningBefore the meeting on Thursday.
“It’s a great way to test out new services in new areas, and we might even be able to use it to test out overnight service.”
In an ideal situation, Lo said, once a rider books a bus, it will arrive at the stop they chose within five to ten minutes.
Lo said that the service wouldn’t take the place of major fixed routes that go downtown. Instead, it would add to them by making it easier for people to get from one side of Barrhaven to the other, for example.
But if on-demand transit works well, the “worst-performing routes” could be cut, he said.
“You’ll no longer have to wait up to 60 minutes—or however many minutes—for a bus. Instead, you’ll be able to request a ride as soon as it’s available,” Lo said. “So the number of services has actually grown.”
Sam Hersh, who is on the board of an advocacy group called Horizon Ottawa and was the only person from the public to speak directly to the pilot project Thursday, didn’t like the idea of this happening.
Hersh told Lo and the other people on the transit commission, “I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea.” “But it’s just a quick fix for a transit system that needs a lot of changes.”
Already going on in Edmonton and the York Regio
The commission found out Thursday that the city is already working with Pantonium, a Toronto-based software company that works with cities to set up digital infrastructure that can instantly improve bus routes and schedules.
Pantonium has already worked on a number of on-demand transit projects in Canada, including one in Belleville, Ontario, that was cutting edge when it started in 2018.
Lo said that Edmonton has Canada’s largest on-demand transit network, but the one in York Region, with its mix of suburban and rural communities, might be the best example for OC Transpo.
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OC Transpo’s general manager, Renée Amilcar, said that the goal in Ottawa is to connect people who use the pilot project to the “backbone of their transit,” but she didn’t go into more detail.
Lo said that if the pilot leads to more people taking the bus, that will be the best sign of success.
He said, “The hope is that demand will grow and that it will pay for itself.”