Caption: A customer answers a Rate-My-Ride question while using Transit app on their phone.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re one of the 127,268 monthly users of Transit, our favourite trip planning app.
We partnered with Transit in 2023 to offer customers a simple option to plan their trips on the go. Transit is a handy tool that allows you to take advantage of real-time data to customize your travel plans.
One of the features that we love in this app is GO, the turn-by-turn navigator. Not only do you get helpful trip planning information, but you also help other customers by sharing the location of the bus while on board. We know that customers are finding this useful too. GO was used 2,667,855 times by Ottawa customers in 2024!
While using GO, you may have answered a few short questions that help provide us with a pulse on your experience. Recently, we were asked on social media whether the results of these surveys ever make their way to OC Transpo and if so, do we ever read them? This is a great question and we’re happy to say the answer is yes, and yes.
This time on The Next Stop Blog, we’ll explain the two different customer surveys in Transit, what kind of data Transit shares with us, and how these surveys complement the other channels we regularly use to collect data.
When you start a GO trip in Transit, you’ll be prompted by a question in the app that will ask you about your immediate experience. Is the bus stop well lit? Do you feel safe while waiting? These are the Rate-My-Ride questions. Once you’re on board, questions will ask you about the experience inside the vehicle. For example, how clean is the bus? Is it noisy?
The responses to these questions are anonymous. There’s no account information associated with them.
In March 2025, customers answered 557,307 Rate-My-Ride questions. This is about an 18% increase from the same time last year!
Route 88 is regularly one of the most frequently used routes among Transit app users so it’s no surprise that it also receives the highest number of Rate-My-Ride responses.
When it comes to bus stops, we notice the highest number of Rate-My-Ride responses go to stops along the Transitway and those at post-secondary schools. High response rates don’t always mean that the bus stop needs repair. At the time of writing this blog, Hurdman stop D is the most frequently rated stop of the past nine months and has an average rating of 4.4 out of 5. Not bad!
A team of OC Transpo staff has access to Rate-My-Ride data which they review and share with subject-matter experts and decision makers on a regular basis. Having access to daily customer feedback allows staff to identify service impacts, and track trends and patterns in customer experience.
For example, you may have noticed a question asking if the next stop announcements (NSAS for short) are working correctly onboard your bus. We audit our NSAS regularly, and the additional daily feedback we receive from customers through Rate-My-Ride gives us a fuller picture of any day-to-day issues.
Caption: Rate-My-Ride question in Transit asking if the digital signage (NSAS) is working.
Transit also collects feedback through its in-app Rider Happiness Benchmark survey. This long-form survey takes place four times a year and is advertised in a banner in the app. Like Rate-My-Ride, these responses are anonymous.
In contrast to the Rate-My-Ride survey which is OC Transpo-specific, the Rider Happiness Benchmark survey uses the same questions across all of Transit’s partner agencies. This means that we can compare OC Transpo responses against other transit agencies across Canada and North America.
The Rider Happiness Benchmark survey covers a range of topics including service quality, improvement priorities, riding habits, and demographic information. If you’re interested in seeing the aggregate responses for yourself, Transit posts summaries and special topics related to the Rider Happiness Benchmark survey on their blog: Rider Satisfaction Benchmarking Survey for Agency Performance.
Because it is done quarterly, this survey gives us a sense of bigger-picture customer sentiment, rather than in-the-moment feedback. We track the results over time and use the outcomes of this survey as a complement to other customer satisfaction benchmarking activities that we do separately.
Caption: Results from the Winter 2025 Rider Happiness Benchmark survey showing OC Transpo respondent destinations.
By the way, the Rider Happiness Benchmark survey also asks customers to share their thoughts on bus operator performance. We’re pleased to say that OC Transpo was named “Most Improved” in the category of Riders most likely to say that their driver was good at their job among transit agencies participating in the survey in 2024. Congratulations to all OC Transpo bus operators for continuing to provide safe, courteous and professional service to customers!
A keen-eyed survey enthusiast might note that a limitation of these two surveys is that they require participants to opt in to participate. They are also limited to customers who use Transit as their trip-planning app. While most customers in Ottawa do use Transit, these factors are still considered when we interpret the data.
Customer survey data plays a key role in our Five-Year Roadmap. In addition to participating in Transit’s in-app surveys, OC Transpo takes part in the International Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG), Community of Metros Benchmarking Group (COMET), and North American Light Rail Systems Benchmarking Group (GOAL). We also commission our own customer satisfaction and customer pulse surveys by phone. Each survey we participate in provides another perspective to inform decision makers at OC Transpo and the City of Ottawa.
So, next time you’re prompted by Transit to answer a few questions about your experience, look around and let us know how things are going. There’s someone on the other side waiting to hear from you.
Would you like to hear more about customer surveys and feedback? Have another question you’d like answered? Let The Next Stop Blog team know by emailing thenextstopblog@ottawa.ca
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