OC Transpo says ridership up in 2025, but bus service missing targets

An OC Transpo bus is pictured in this Jan. 10, 2026 image. (Josh Marano/CTV News Ottawa)

New data shared by OC Transpo shows ridership on buses and O-Train lines grew in 2025 compared with the year prior, but buses are still missing key reliability targets.

The transit service reported 70.6 million trips in 2025, up 3.9 per cent from 2024, when 67.9 million passenger trips were reported; however, this is still below 2019 levels, which saw 97.4 million trips.

October 2025 saw the highest ridership last year, at 7.8 million passengers. July was the quietest month, at 4.5 million trips.

O-Train Lines 2 and 4 launched in January 2025. The north-south light rail line with a spur to the airport saw 4.7 million rides in the first year of service, OC Transpo says.

Bus service not hitting targets

The data shared by OC Transpo on Tuesday show bus service is consistently missing reliability targets.

OC Transpo has a target of delivering 99.5 per cent of planned trips but only achieved that goal during five months last year. The 12-month average for service delivery was 97.2 per cent.

Frequent routes are not hitting the target of 85 per cent of trips being “evenly spaced” every 15 minutes. The transit system had an average of 82 per cent last year.

Less-frequent routes were well below the 85 per cent target of showing up no more than one minute early or five minutes late. OC Transpo says 13 per cent of buses on these routes did not arrive on time.

Para Transpo service also saw a boost in ridership, up 3.4 per cent year over year. There were 885,600 trips on Para Transpo in 2025, 93 per cent of which picked customers up during the 30-minute booking window.

Bus service has been lagging in Ottawa, particularly in January 2026, with high numbers of trip cancellations. The latest figures from OC Transpo show 6,628 cancelled trips out of 136,281 planned trips, for an average cancellation rate of of 4.9 per cent. This figure, however, does not include 255 trips per week that were removed from the schedule starting Jan. 12 to reduce the number of buses needed on the roads each day.

OC Transpo says its aging bus fleet, delays in receiving zero-emission buses to replace older diesel buses, and a lack of qualified mechanics have led to an increased number of cancellations to start the year, though the rate of cancellations has improved week over week.

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