Nearly 500 regular OC Transpo bus trips cancelled to support R1 after freezing rain last week

Transit riders board an R1 bus at Blair Station on Friday, March 13, 2026. (Andrew Adlington/CTV News Ottawa)

OC Transpo says nearly 500 regular bus trips were cancelled in the latter half of last week to provide R1 bus service after O-Train Line 1 service was interrupted by freezing rain.

An overhead power line broke on the line during the freezing rainstorm on March 11, halting service east of uOttawa station and requiring replacement buses to supplement service. Two days later, another wire snapped at Blair Station. End-to-end service was restored on Sunday.

In a memo sent on Friday, interim general manager of Transit Services Troy Charter said there were 1,948 undelivered bus trips during the week of March 8 to 14, accounting for just over 4 per cent of the number of planned trips. Of those, 494 were a result of rail replacement service.

“The results for the second week of March were impacted by the freezing rain event that required adjustments to Line 1 service and the implementation of R1 bus service. With Line 1 service at all stations, bus service has recovered, and incremental progress in strengthening bus service delivery continues,” Charter wrote.

Of the remaining cancelled trips, 521 were due to a lack of available drivers, 452 were for on-street adjustments such as traffic, collisions, or customer incidents, 254 were because of mechanical breakdowns, and 227 were because a bus was not available.

These figures do not include the 255 daily trips that were removed from the schedule entirely to reduce the number of buses needed to operate service each day.

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Charter said there was an average of 501 available buses every day last week, in line with the revised weekday requirement of 500. The normal requirement is 520. Charter has said in past statements to reporters that once bus availability returns closer to that 520 level, OC Transpo will start adding trips back to the schedule.

The electric bus fleet has expanded to 72, with the delivery of eight new buses, Charter said. The city expects to have 110 electric buses in the fleet by the end of this month.

Bus trip cancellations by week in 2026:

• March 8: 1,948 of 44,922 trips scheduled (4.3 per cent)
• March 1: 1,020 of 44,922 trips scheduled (2.3 per cent)
• Feb. 22: 1,310 of 44,922 trips scheduled (2.9 per cent)
• Feb. 15: 1,527 of 45,029 trips scheduled (3.4 per cent)
• Feb. 8: 2,087 of 45,054 trips scheduled (4.6 per cent)
• Feb. 1: 1,577 of 45,052 trips scheduled (3.5 per cent)
• Jan. 25: 2,636 of 44,342 trips scheduled (5.9 per cent)
• Jan. 18: 1,530 of 45,342 trips scheduled (3.4 per cent)
• Jan. 11: 2,330 of 45,342 trips scheduled (5.1 per cent)
• Jan. 4: 2,768 of 45,342 trips scheduled (6.1 per cent)

No change in LRT service

Charter said 21 light rail vehicles on Line 1 remain below the 100,000-kilometre mileage limit for the cartridge bearing assemblies (CBAs), which was implemented in late January after spalling was discovered on some rail cars.

Line 1 service continues to run with single-car trains at intervals of every three to four minutes during peak periods. Peak service normally requires 26 trains, running in a double-car configuration.

The number of available light rail vehicles has not changed since mid-February. Charter has said OC Transpo has shifted its focus toward the full restoration of Line 1 service and away from returning small numbers of train cars into operation.

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“Work continues with Rideau Transit Group (RTG) to finalize the technical details of a revised containment plan for the CBAs. Once implemented, this multi-layered strategy will allow capacity on Line 1 to be safely restored. OC Transpo will present details of the containment plan at a technical briefing as soon as it is finalized,” he wrote.

Weeks have gone by with similar messages of approaching a finalized plan. Charter has said the information is “highly technical” and requires outside expertise to validate.

“Our first priority remains the safe restoration of Line 1 capacity. Once this is accomplished, work will continue to increase the train fleet to a sufficient number to proceed with the Trial Running phase of the O-Train East Extension. A technical briefing will be held prior to the start of Trial Running to provide more information,” Charter said in Friday’s memo.

The Line 1 east extension officially achieved substantial completion on March 5, a step that is required before trial running begins. The trial running period requires 46 light rail vehicles, according to staff, but 38 of the 59 trains in the fleet remain offline due to the spalling problem.