OC Transpo misses ridership targets in first 2 months of 2024

OC Transpo's ridership lagging OC Transpo missed its ridership and revenue targets in the first two months of the year. CTV's Kimberley Fowler reports.

OC Transpo ridership was up in the first two months of 2024 compared to the year before, but the transit service continues to miss its ridership targets.

A report for the Transit Commission shows there was 6.1 million passenger trips on OC Transpo buses and the O-Train in February and 6 million trips in January.

OC Transpo had been projecting 6.4 million passenger trips in both January and February. Ridership was 5.5 million trips in January 2023 and 5.4 million trips in February 2023.

No data was available for ridership in March, but OC Transpo had projected 6.6 million passenger trips during the third month of the year.

Statistics show the transit service collected $12.8 million in fare revenue in February, after collecting $12.2 million in January. The budget called for $13.7 million in fare revenue in January and $13.8 million in February.

"The variance in fare revenue is in large part due to the lower-than-expected sale of full-fare adult monthly passes," staff said.

Officials are not raising alarm bells over the missed ridership targets at this point in the year.

"At this point, I don't think it's a huge risk," Transit Commission chair Glen Gower said.

"But if it continues over the year we may have to take some actions to make sure we don't end up in a deficit."

Transit Services general manager Renee Amilcar added, "We know that customers have changed their behaviour, so those who used to buy monthly passes maybe now they don't. So we will review that and we will try to have a better forecast."

Route cancellations

Dozens of OC Transpo bus routes continued to be cancelled in March.

Statistics show an average of 104 out of 8,061 scheduled trips were not delivered on weekdays last month.

The most cancelled routes are Route 6 with 131 cancellations in March, followed by O-Train Line 2 replacement buses (129 trip cancellations) and Route 12 (110 undelivered trips).

Staff say 43 per cent of trips were cancelled due to "not enough operators", while 32 per cent of trips were cancelled due to on-street service adjustments, such as traffic congestion."

The committee was told approximately 32 trips a day were cancelled due to traffic congestion.

Staff say the on-time performance for buses running every 15 minutes or more frequently was 66 per cent in January and February, up from 61 per cent in December and 59 per cent in November.