Ridership on O-Train Line 1 not high enough to justify restoring off-peak headways: OC Transpo

An O-Train on Line 1 pulls into Bayview Station in this undated image. (Natalie van Rooy/CTV News Ottawa)

The head of OC Transpo says ridership on O-Train Line 1 has not increased enough to justify a return to more frequent service during off-peak hours.

Last summer, OC Transpo cut off-peak weekday service on the east-west Confederation Line to every 10 minutes from every five minutes. The move was an effort to save money amid significant budgetary constraints, as the transit system faces multimillion-dollar shortfalls in revenue.

Transit Services general manager Renée Amilcar says the off-peak service cut will save an estimated $1.6 million per year.

City council directed staff to study ridership patterns and customer volumes on the line in the wake of the change. In a memo to city councillors Monday, Amilcar wrote that the number of customer trips observed during the fall of 2024 was slightly lower than the projections that were used when the decision was made to adjust the level of service.

“In the memo to Council on August 2, 2024, staff projected that the maximum number of customer-trips per hour per direction would be 4,400 during the peak periods and 2,900 at off-peak times. The actual observed ridership averaged 4,200 customer trips per hour during the afternoon peak period and 2,400 customer-trips per hour during the off-peak periods,” she wrote.

This represents an average maximum of 58 per cent of available capacity during peak hours and up 67 per cent of capacity during off-peak hours, the memo said.

Staff also studied levels of crowding at Line 1 stations between Sept. 3 and Oct. 11, 2024, focusing on the hourly reports during the weekday period between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. A total of 140 platform volume observations were made, the memo said.

“During the days and times observed, passenger loads remained light 87 per cent of the time. The first seven weekdays of service in September saw medium passenger loads after which only four days over rest of the month had medium loads,” Amilcar wrote. “Passenger volumes were observed to be ‘heavy’ on only one instance, September 23, between noon and 1 p.m. This increase was due to a temporary train diversion affecting O-Train service that day.”

Amilcar concluded by saying that Line 1 has sufficient capacity to meet demand at the current service levels during off-peak periods and said changes to train frequency would not have a positive impact on revenue.

“The majority of fare revenue across the OC Transpo transit network is collected from the sale of pre-paid fares. Revenue from the sale of these products does not vary based on how many trips customers complete every month and would not be significantly affected by any change in ridership during the off-peak periods,” she wrote.

She said staff would continue to monitor the system and adjust service levels within the budget to ensure adequate capacity is provided.

Before the LRT launched, residents were told they would see a train every three minutes and 20 seconds during peak periods and every five minutes during off-peak periods and weekends. Peak service was changed to every five minutes or less when the line officially opened in 2019.

Off-peak trains now arrive every 10 minutes during weekdays, every nine minutes on Saturdays and between every nine and 10 minutes on Sundays. Trains come every five minutes during weekday peak periods from 6:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

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Updates on current ridership trends are expected at Transit Committee on Thursday.