Transit Is Broken. Here’s How We Rebuild It.
The real problem isn’t just buses and trains — it’s how decisions are made.
I’m assembling 1,000 people ready to work together and win back our city. Follow here for my values, priorities and thoughts on how we get Ottawa back on track.
1,000 People Can Take Back Ottawa
We Need a Candidate Who Can Win the Mayor’s Race
Who Really Runs Ottawa?
Three Priorities for Restoring Ottawa
Winning Ottawa. Governing Differently.
Whether you are a regular user or not, fixing our public transit system is a top priority for people across the city.
Bad transit means more cars. More congestion.
It means long waits and unreliable connections for riders counting on transit to get them to work or school on time.
And it means a $6 billion system that feels worse than what we had before.
And when trains break down in -20°C weather, forcing passengers to walk in the snow to the next platform, people don’t just lose time — they lose trust.
Transit isn’t just a set of operational failures. It has become a systems failure.
OC Transpo ridership peaked in 2011, with over 103 million rides taken. The system has been in a steady downward decline ever since. In 2025, 71 million rides were taken.
Beyond Whack-A-Mole
The transit operational challenges seem endless. Shortage of buses. Lack of mechanics. Stress on train axles. LRT East opening delays. Uncertainty around provincial uploading.
Like a game of Whack-A-Mole, for every issue we solve, a new one seems to pop up.
Inside City Hall, there is a belief that fixing transit simply means responding to these operational challenges. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says “… public transit. It takes time. It takes resources. We’re going to get there.” Councillor Jeff Leiper says that in the next term of Council he will "push for a funded plan to ensure we are buying buses regularly.”
Even if every operational issue were fixed tomorrow, transit would still feel broken.
Commuting to work or school will still take hours for a trip that takes minutes by car. Residents will still see an unacceptably high risk of getting stranded by the LRT. And we will still lack any sense of accountability for those who created this system.
Something bigger is going on. Something beyond the operational issues is preventing Ottawa from returning to decent transit.
Broken decision-making and oversight
That something is governance.
How decisions are made
Whether oversight is real
How a billion-dollar-a-year budget is funded.
Flawed decision-making and oversight have allowed transit to focus on the latest operational problem while ignoring the structural causes of our failures — the same causes that enable City Hall to repeat the same mistakes.
A 3-step plan for fixing transit
Let’s be honest. There is no easy or quick solution for fixing transit in Ottawa.
But it’s time to move beyond empty promises to a 3-step plan that addresses both the decision-making and operational issues with OC Transpo.
1. Truth in transit
We cannot move forward without being honest to the people of Ottawa about our transit system.
The City is still not admitting to a root cause of our LRT derailment — five years after it happened — and how it relates to the slow speed of trains around corners and the choice to only run shortened trains.
We need City Hall to release its final assessment of the root cause of LRT failures, and the structural fixes that will be required. City Hall must also spell out the implications for east and west expansion, and when residents will get a return to full service.
We’re also not being honest with the public about bus service. Does the New Ways to Bus provide a level of service that meets minimum expected standards, or have those with other options simply given up on transit? Why does the Transit app cancel rides minutes before they are supposed to show up? We need OC Transpo to make unfiltered realtime GPS bus locations available so that phantom buses become a thing of the past.
The people responsible for breaking transit have never been held accountable. Truth in transit is the first step in addressing that missing accountability.
It’s time to identify where responsibility lies — especially when decision-makers remain in positions of authority — and ensure proper accountability.
Until we have that truth, it will be hard to rebuild public trust in a system that so many have given up on.
2. Citizen and frontline leadership
Transit riders know what works. So do bus operators. So do mechanics. So do parents trying to get their kids to school and workers trying to get home at 11 p.m.
The problem isn’t that we lack expertise. It’s that the wrong voices dominate decision-making.
For years, transit planning in Ottawa has been driven by consultants, back-room deals, and private WhatsApp channels. Riders are consulted after decisions are already made.
That has to change.
Ottawa should convene a Citizens’ Assembly on Transit — a representative group of residents, riders, frontline workers, accessibility advocates, and small business owners — tasked with designing a new service blueprint for the city.
Not a town hall.
Not a survey.
Not a performative consultation.
A structured, time-limited body with real authority to recommend:
What level of service every neighbourhood should receive
How buses and rail should be integrated
What reliability standards must be met
How we measure success — publicly and transparently
How the assembly’s recommendations can be funded
Its recommendations would be publicly presented across the city, before being formally tabled at Council with a recorded vote.
Cities around the world have used citizens’ assemblies to break political gridlock and rebuild trust.1 Transit planning should not be left to those who presided over its decline.
If we want people to ride transit again, they need to see themselves in its design.
When riders help build the system, they help defend it.
3. New ways to fund transit
Transit is expensive. But we can’t raise fares without further eroding ridership. And we can’t ask taxpayers to put good money after bad into a transit system that barely works.
We need to find new ways to fund transit. The City should prioritize two approaches.
First, Ottawa can create an arm’s-length transit real estate agency which monetizes the land around and above stations, and uses that money as a funding source for transit operations. Land value capture around stations can generate hundreds of millions over time if structured properly.
Cities in Asia figured this out a long time ago. Other cities, including in Canada, are following that lead. TransLink in metro Vancouver has created a real estate subsidiary to capitalize on property appreciation along new transit corridors. Montreal used a similar approach to fund its light rail expansions.
This won’t solve everything overnight. But structured properly, land value capture can reduce pressure on fares and property taxes over time.
Second, Ottawa needs to coordinate with Toronto and other municipalities to push the province to restore funding for transit operations. Until the late 1990s, the province paid for about half of transit operations. It’s time for the province to reassume that responsibility, but that will only come with a concerted effort by cities working together.
We need a Mayor who understands how to get results out of higher levels of government and who is willing to lead the charge on behalf of all municipalities in Ontario.
The City cannot solve a structural funding gap alone. That’s not politics — it’s math.
Your thoughts
Transit is a big part of how a city moves. Right now, Ottawa is stuck. We don’t have to be.
I’ve laid out one plan. What do you think?
What would you suggest we do to build a transit system people trust again?
Transit doesn’t just move buses and trains.
It determines who can access opportunity and who gets left behind.
One thing’s for sure.
Change will only happen when everyday residents step up and lead.
We’re doing that with The Thousand. Will you join us?
This post is full of misinformation
> The City is still not admitting to a root cause of our LRT derailment
How is the city supposed to know what the root cause of the LRT is without the private consortium researching it? They are still working on that
> We need City Hall to release its final assessment of the root cause of LRT failures, and the structural fixes that will be required
The city can't say the structural fixes required when Alstom doesn't even know
> Why does the Transit app cancel rides minutes before they are supposed to show up?
When else are you supposed to cancel trips? They get cancelled because a previous bus is too late that it is not worth starting the next, and we don't have enough buses to cover them as extras
> We need OC Transpo to make unfiltered realtime GPS bus locations available so that phantom buses become a thing of the past
This is already the case. Every bus, van and supervisor vehicle's GPS location is published whether they are on a route or not
> And we can’t ask taxpayers to put good money after bad into a transit system that barely works.
So you are just going to be begging for money from the province and refusing to fund transit with property taxes just like Mark Sutcliffe. Why would anyone vote for someone planning on doing the same as we are already doing today
Please do some basic research next time you write about transit
As well as all this, we need to move toward a transit crown corp that develops expertise in Canada. We can’t leave it to every city to develop transit in isolation from others. We share unique challenges and need shareable solutions. We need Canadians to be making Canadian vehicles for Canadian conditions.
Ottawa is a good place to push for this.