Stittsville transit riders have been facing many delays and no-shows during the peak times on our bus routes for quite some time. Well, good news! This afternoon John Manconi, General Manager of the Transportation Services Department, announced in a written memo that additional buses are being deployed to Stittsville on Routes 62, 261, 262, and 263 for the morning peak times and on Route 261 during the afternoon. The route updates will become effective in January 2020.
These additional buses are being deployed as a result of the hundreds of comments instigated from the ridership to OC Transpo directly and to Councillor Glen Gower, who worked closely with OC Transpo to get Stittsville’s bus routes improved.
Stittsville Central contacted Councillor Gower to get his reaction to this announcement. “It’s a start. I’m still waiting to see exactly how these extra buses will be deployed on the routes. The additional “stand by” buses will help. Bottom line is we need to get the buses running on schedule, so that residents know they can get to work and get home on time,” Gower told us.
The Councillor went on to say, “we’ll be looking at service improvements when we review the 2020 budget next week at Transit Commission. Besides improving rush hour reliability, there are lots of areas where I’d like to see improvement for Stittsville, like improved service to the Fernbank area and better weekend and evening coverage.”.
OC Transpo will be placing buses at key stand-by locations to enable them to be dispatched to replace regularly-scheduled trips that are missing or late. During the afternoon peak period, buses have also been assigned to provide extra trips from Tunney’s Pasture Station to the park and ride lots at both Eagleson Station and Fallowfield Station.
John Manconi said in his memo to the Mayor, Council and Transit Commission members, “We are continuing to monitor the use of these buses and their success in reducing waiting times and crowding. Further adjustments may be made to these assignments through the remainder of the year.”.
Manconi added, “Some of the schedule changes will be to address on-time performance on routes that are currently experiencing reliability issues and some of the changes will be to increase capacity where required.”.
“We will share details of the January schedule changes when we have
completed that work. We will also continue to work with Councillors on addressing certain specific issues that they have raised,” Manconi went on to say.
Councillor Gower certainly deserves kudos for consistently raising this issue with OC Transpo on behalf of Stittsville bus riders.