The O-Train Lines 2 and 4 will be opening for seven-day service starting this weekend, OC Transpo has announced, the last step in a phased opening approach that first began in January.
This latest step marks the completion of the phased opening plan, which began with weekday service on Jan. 6, increasing to include service on Saturdays on Jan. 25. The opening plan was developed based on public inquiry report recommendations, lessons learned, and third-party recommendations.
“Throughout this process, OC Transpo has been closely monitoring the performance of all system elements,” said Renée Amilcar, general manager of Transit Services in a memo.
With this latest step, the O-Train will run from 6 a.m. to midnight Monday to Friday, 6:30 a.m. to midnight on Saturdays, and 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Sundays.
OC Transpo will continue to monitor the system and phase out parallel bus service as train ridership increases.
At a recent check-in, Katrina Camposarcone-Stubbs, public information officer at the City of Ottawa Transit Services Department, told Ottawa Compass the phased opening approach allowed staff to “work out the bugs” in the system before opening for full service.
Since service expanded to six-day service, OC Transpo and TransitNext has evolved operations to address concerns, including by increasing staffing levels, growing familiarity for operators with severe winter conditions, quick response to disruptions from maintenance teams, full fleet availability and efficient maintenance, upgrades to switch infrastructure, which helps with winter operations, and improving customer information systems.
At the four-week mark, more than 300,000 trips had been taken on the O-Train, OC Transpo told the newly renamed Transit Committee this month.
OC Transpo also reported a 69 per cent increase in usage of local Park and Rides and decreased use of parallel bus services as customers become more familiar and confident with the O-Train system.
On the campaign trail, Premier Doug Ford vowed to upload Ottawa’s LRT system to the province. It’s unclear if this would include the O-Train Lines 2 and 4, which are diesel-operated, rather than high-frequency like the Line 1 LRT.
Ford was re-elected for another term on Feb. 26, and as the province awaits news of his cabinet appointments for this mandate, the City of Ottawa has maintained that Ford’s announcement was “part of the provincial election campaign”.
“The City of Ottawa has not entered into any formal negotiations with the Province,” said city manager Wendy Stephanson in a memo. “It would be premature to speculate on details at this time.”
