If you’re a regular bus user, you may soon be travelling on a brand-new bus. OC Transpo says the first of its new 60-foot articulated, or “accordion-style,” buses are now in service. “More comfort, more reliability,” says Rami El Feghali, OC Transpo’s director of bus operations and maintenance. The purchase of 52 new 60-foot diesel buses was approved in the 2025 budget. On Monday, OC Transpo said one of them arrived and entered service, and as many as 19 more will be on the roads by the end of this year. The transit agency says the high-capacity buses are made to move more customers efficiently across the transit network, “A lot of work has to go into older buses to keep them somewhat reliable, but we’ll never see what this kind of new bus will give you. Less breakdowns means less disappointments for customers. That means we’ll be there, hopefully on time to pick them up and make them get to where they’re supposed to go,” El Feghali told CTV News Ottawa. What’s new? On Thursday, CTV News toured the inside of bus number 6710, the first of the new buses in service. OC Transpo says there is new LED lighting, large LED info boards throughout the bus, security cameras and wider doors. Anyone used to sitting in the centre articulated area will also notice there are no more seats in that section. This past summer, OC Transpo announced a plan to refurbish 30 existing 60-foot articulated buses at an average cost of $180,000 per bus to maintain fleet numbers after several issues with bus availability over the winter caused thousands of trip cancellations. The City of Ottawa had originally planned to buy 60-foot articulated electric buses, but scrapped that plan in 2024 because of market limitations, opting instead to buy more than 300 of the shorter 40-foot electric buses. OC Transpo says by fall 2027, 50 per cent of the conventional bus fleet will be replaced with electric buses. With files from CTV’s Ted Raymond
