By the numbers: OC Transpo bus fleet
New data on recent cancellations, and an interview with GM Troy Charter
After a very, very high number of cancellations and delays last week, OC Transpo has released additional data about the status of the bus fleet and cancellations. It was the worst week for bus service that I can recall over the past five years
From January 4 to January 10:
6% of all scheduled trips were not delivered.
The worst day was Monday, January 5, with over 800 cancelled trips. It was the day after a major snowfall.
On average, only 467 buses were available every weekday, compared to the usual requirement of 520 buses to deliver full service. That’s about 10% fewer buses than actually required for service, at least double the gap in fleet availability that we were seeing in the fall.
There are a few reasons for cancelled trips, the bus shortage is the primary cause.
. The lack of buses is due to three main factors:
Age of fleet = more complex and lengthier maintenance = buses out of service for longer
Ongoing challenges to recruit licensed mechanics resulting in a backlog of repairs.
Supply chain issues impacting the delivery of new Zero Emission Buses (ZEBs).
OC says that we will see "noticeable and consistent improvements in service delivery for customers" in the coming days, weeks, and months. You can read a summary of what they’re doing here. We did see some improvements this week, but there are still a lot of cancellations and delays. Yesterday’s snow storm would not have helped either.
Worth listening: OC Transpo Interim General Manager Troy Charter was interviewed on CBC’s Ottawa Morning today. I’ve included part of the transcript below, and you can listen to the full interview here.
REBECCA ZANDBERGEN: Remind us what’s going on because I understand last week, Monday, there were close to 800 trips cancelled just on that day alone. What what’s going on?
TROY CHARTER: So that’s correct we’re dealing with an aging bus fleet that require more and more maintenance and when they go in for maintenance they’re in there for longer and longer periods of time and we’re experiencing a high level defects going into the winter and cold months. So that’s having an impact on the number of buses that are available for service which ultimately then impacts the number of trips and our customers. That were working very hard on right now, the entire team is focused on getting our bus availability numbers up so that we can minimize and reduce the number of cancellations that are impacting our customersRZ: How is it that the buses are aging all at once - like you would think that they would be updated through the years and so you wouldn’t end up with a whole bunch aging out at the same time?
TC: This really goes back to previous procurements many, many years ago in which we did have a few large procurement purchases where we purchased a large number of vehicles at the same time. The good news is that we do have 350 - almost half our fleet - will be replaced over the next year, year-and-a-half but at this point it’s managing the fleet that we currently have as we onboard the new electric buses.RZ: Those are the ones that are coming on the 350? And those have taken longer to arrive then you had initially hoped, right?
TC: Yeah, and that compounds the problem. We’re about a year-and-a-half, two years delayed in getting these buses in service which would have put us in a very different position than what we are today. But the buses are being delivered now. We have about 40 of those buses in service, we hope to have 110 of those buses in service by the end of spring, and then when we get to midpoint next year we should have the entire 350 buses. So our focus really right now is getting those buses into service getting them quickly as possible and training our staff to be able to maintain a new electric bus fleet.
RZ: And was it a mistake to put all of your eggs in that electric bus basket, knowing that there were these supply issues and now we we’ve been waiting on that for so long?
TC: We’re not putting all our eggs in one basket, a big portion of our fleet will be electric buses, but we also did purchase - council approved purchase of 50 diesel articulated buses, some of them will be coming this year with the remainder next year. As well when we start to see these challenges we purchased 11 used buses we’re continuing to look, scour the country and North America for other used buses that would provide us a higher degree of reliability. So the electric buses will replace about half or fleet, we’ve got new diesel articulated buses, and we’ve already started initiating our planning process for next wave of buses that we need to purchase.
RZ: And the EV buses, do they work well in cold weather?
TC: We piloted four buses a few years ago before we made the purchase to move forward with the 350. So yeah, we’ve had good positive results with the e-buses so far. It’s based on the limited sample but we feel confident that they will be able to meet all the weather conditions because we did pilot those buses for well over a year in all weather conditions prior to making the purchase of the 350.
TZ: OK since you had the 800 cancelled buses last week, Monday, how are things looking now. Are things improving or are you still below the bar where you’d like to be with the number of trips cancelled?
TC: We are still below the bar we want to be in terms of the number of trips cancelled but we have seen some incremental improvements. And that’s why we’ve committed to providing weekly updates, and there will be an update going out later today with regards to all the initiatives that we put in place to improve our bus counts. But you know we are we are seeing a higher degree of cancellation still. One of the things that we’ve also done this week as we started to proactively remove some trips from the schedule. And I encourage our customers to keep an eye out on website check for alerts. We’re proactively pulling some of those trips – because we know it’s disruptive for our customers and we know that it’s very frustrating, but if we can provide better information for them to make their planning and make their trips, I think that will be helpful. But we’ve seen some improvement, we have to see how we’ve recovered from yesterday’s snow storm because those always are challenging and really challenge the bus fleet but we are committed to providing weekly updates as we progress.
RZ: Are there other challenges you’re facing I understand too mechanics has been a been a problem and supply issues as you mentioned assuming those same issues would arrive in other cities then. So with the rationale that those are the main reasons are we seeing the same issues in other cities with bus service dropping some of its frequency?
TC: Our issues here with our bus fleet is, we touched on the three aspects of it. It’s the aging bus fleet, it’s the delay in the procurement of our replacement buses, as well as the ongoing challenges. And that not a local problem, it’s an international problem with regards to skilled trades and mechanics. This is part of our actions that we’ve been taking. We took actions a few years ago to improve or to augment our internal apprentice program for mechanics and you know it takes a couple of years to go through that program. We put that put in place because we were having problems recruiting and retaining more mechanics. The good news there is we’ve got 22 apprentices in in progress which of which six of them are will be graduating between now and the summertime. Were looking at all those options and how we can improve. That skilled trades aspect and the lack of mechanics, that’s something that everyone struggling. We’ve been reaching out to other properties, to other suppliers, asking if they would loan us mechanics and they’re saying the same thing: know we’re struggling to retain people and we need to retain as many people as they can have. We’ve gone out with a very aggressive recruitment campaign, we’ve augmented our apprentice program, we have a new collective agreement with new pay rates which will help attract and retain new mechanics. A lot of those decisions that need to be made to put us in a much more sustainable and improved position long-term have been made, but unfortunately some of these things that they take time to see the results, and I know that’s hard to customers.