OC Explained: Five Year Road Map  

Where do you see yourself in five years? 

You’ve probably been asked this in a job interview or by your high school guidance councillor. We asked this very question to ourselves in 2023, and were proud to share those answers in the OC Transpo Five Year Roadmap.  

Our Five Year Roadmap guides how we’ll modernize and grow into a world-class transit network. We’ve provided annual updates on how we’re progressing, but our work is not done. Join The Next Stop Blog to learn what has been accomplished through OC Transpo’s Five Year Road Map, and what’s next on the road to providing better transit service. 

What is the OC Transpo Five Year Roadmap? 

Our Five Year Roadmap includes more than 20 key strategic initiatives that are all tracked using key performance indicators.  

Our vision is that we’re proud to be your choice to get there. We want to be an organization that our people are proud to belong to and that provides a service that the public are proud to use. Our mission is that we connect and build Ottawa’s communities. We promise to deliver safe, clean, dependable and accessible transit. We put our people and our customers first.  

It is important that we state where we have been and where we are going. Since 2023, the Roadmap has kept track of how we’re doing in five key areas:  

• Our People: The staff working within the Transit Services Department whose efforts come together to manage and operate OC Transpo and Para Transpo. There are thousands of professionals working in a wide variety of roles, including operations, planning, safety and security, engineering, communications and administrative roles, just to name a few! 
• Our Customers: You, the people who rely on us and our service to get you to where you’re going; whether it’s to work, school, an appointment, or to visit friends and family. 
• Our Services: The sum of our customer-facing operations - bus, rail, and Para Transpo service. The key focus in this pillar is making our service more reliable. 
• Our Assets: The properties, vehicles, infrastructure and technology that form the transit network and are used to provide our services to customers every day of the year. 
• Our Finances: Investments we make to support our operations. We’re careful to make the best use of every dollar in our budget for the long-term success of Ottawa’s transit network. 

None of these pillars are more important than another. As you can see below, the pie is sliced in five equal pieces and each piece needs to be balanced in order for us to achieve our vision.  

More than 20 key strategic initiatives are tracked within these five pillars. 

Every year, we update Transit Committee on the progress of each initiative in the Scorecard – our Scorecard includes key performance indicators for every initiative to show how we’re doing in meeting our targets, keeping us accountable to the public and Council. The latest update covering our performance from 2024 was presented to Transit Committee in April 2025. 

Recent Accomplishments 

As part of the second annual update, OC Transpo outlined the following accomplishments in 2024: 

• Hired 222 bus operators and 12 Para Transpo operators 
• Increased O-Train Line 1 service delivery from 97.1 per cent to 98.8 per cent 
• Increased bus service delivery from 97.8 per cent to 98 per cent 
• Performed data upgrades to allow customers who use the Transit App to see better real-time arrival predictions 
• Doubled usage of My Para Transpo, the online self-serve system that lets Para Transpo customers quickly book, cancel, and track their trips 
• Added four new zero-emission buses to the fleet with more arriving in 2025 

Here’s a deep dive on accomplishments and year over year improvements made across all five pillars: 

Our Services  

• One major project that we completed in 2023 was the Bus Route Review, and that’s led to implementation of New Ways to Bus on April 27, 2025.  
• New Ways to Bus is expected to make customers’ trips more reliable and link bus routes in the south to the new extensions on O-Train Lines 2 and 4.  

Our Finances  

• Last year, we finished two strategic initiatives that reviewed all our major spending to find efficiencies, and $20 million was saved as a result.  
• New Fare Compliance Initiative remains ongoing to reduce lost revenue and overall fare evasion. Fare compliance initiatives are performed at a variety of locations across our transit system and can be guided by customer or staff feedback.   
• This year, the Transit Long-Range Financial Plan will be brought to City Council; the Plan looks at transit’s long-term future and is a key document for planning our service going forward. 

Our Assets  

• One major group of assets is our rail system, and we opened O-Train Lines 2 and 4 earlier this year. We’re looking forward to the opening of more reliable light rail extending further east and west.  
• While new rail extensions are great additions to our assets, we have work to do to make our bus fleet more reliable. Our buses are aging; older buses require more maintenance and we've seen impacts to our ability to provide reliable bus service.  
• We expect our service will improve with the arrival of more than 300 zero-emission buses this year through 2027, and in the meantime, we have a bus maintenance action plan to ensure we offer a reliable bus service.  

Our Customers  

• We’ve made progress in improving the customer experience over the last two years by launching key technology improvements like O-Payment for fare payment and teaming up with Transit App to make our real-time data more accurate and easier to access.  
• Another strategic initiative that’s in progress and will never end is our focus on improving how we communicate with customers; in fact, one improvement we’ve launched is this blog you’re reading right now! 
• Our People  
• One major focus over the last few years has been on ensuring we have the right number of new bus operators hired and trained so that we can provide the service our customers expect.  
• Since the pandemic, the job market has been very competitive, but we’ve succeeded in recruiting the right number of bus operators. Now that our bus operator staffing level is stable, our focus this year is on recruiting and training more mechanics to keep our buses in good shape for the road. 

What’s next? 

In order to measure our progress, we’ll continue to track data and report annually on how we’re progressing to our targets. 

Next spring, we’ll bring another report and Scorecard to Transit Committee covering 2025. We’re keeping track of our progress and invite you to check out the full report and Scorecard any time. We also report on many key performance indicators related to our service at every Transit Committee. 

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