Saravanamuttoo Condemns Ottawa Transit

This is an edited campaign document from mayoral candidate Neil Saravanamuttoo.

He says transit today is much worse than what we had before with reliability problems and plummeting ridership:

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Whether you are a regular user or not, fixing our public transit system is a top priority for people across the city.

Bad transit means more cars. More congestion.

It means long waits and unreliable connections for riders counting on transit to get them to work or school on time.

And it means a $6-billion system that feels worse than what we had before.

And when trains break down in -20°C weather, forcing passengers to walk in the snow to the next platform, people don’t just lose time — they lose trust.

Transit isn’t just a set of operational failures. It has become a systems failure.

OC Transpo ridership peaked in 2011, with over 103 million rides taken. The system has been in a steady downward decline ever since. In 2025, 71 million rides were taken.

Beyond Whack-A-Mole
The transit operational challenges seem endless. Shortage of buses. Lack of mechanics. Stress on train axles. LRT East opening delays. Uncertainty around provincial uploading.

Like a game of Whack-A-Mole, for every issue we solve, a new one seems to pop up.

Inside City Hall, there is a belief that fixing transit simply means responding to these operational challenges. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says “… public transit. It takes time. It takes resources. We’re going to get there.” Councillor Jeff Leiper says that in the next term of Council he will “push for a funded plan to ensure we are buying buses regularly.”

Even if every operational issue were fixed tomorrow, transit would still feel broken.