Free Transit Ottawa 🇨🇦
@freetransitottawa.bsky.social
Free Transit Ottawa is fighting to make Ottawa's transit system free, reliable, and accessible for a more equitable and sustainable future for all. https://freetransitottawa.ca
The NYT informs readers that dynamic metered parking—implemented in San Francisco, Baltimore, LA, and DC—could bring in *billions of dollars a year* in revenue. Plus room for public spaces, bus lanes, bike lanes, outdoor dining setups, trash containers... check out the EasyPark proposal.
This Parking Spot Is Free. Should It Be?
There are about three million parking spaces in New York City, but drivers are always struggling to find one that’s open. Can the system be fixed?
nytimes.com
Today Council passed my motion, seconded by the Mayor, with a suite of measures to help improve reliability of OC Transpo including adding more para Transpo service, transit priority street changes, LRT freezing rain fixes, more buses and 2 free weekends of service.
"Cities encourage what they accommodate. Designing streets for cars ensures more driving. More bus lanes would make transit an attractive option, improve access to the city, lower emissions and save people money on the ever-soaring costs of car ownership." ottawacitizen.com/opinion/grov...
Grover: Dedicated bus lanes in Ottawa would be a win for everyone
Giving half the road to idle cars is bad for business, the climate and transit.
ottawacitizen.com
Reverend Rae Huang is running for mayor of Los Angeles on a platform to expand the public sphere: social housing, free buses, a public bank, and public movie theaters. She explains how her political vision was shaped in part by her Christian background.
Meet Rae Huang, the Progressive Pastor Running for LA Mayor
Reverend Rae Huang is running for mayor of Los Angeles on a platform to expand the public sphere: social housing, free buses, a public bank, and public movie theaters. She explains how her political vision was shaped in part by her Christian background.
jacobin.com
The people with full power to expand rural transit service consider privatizing it🤦♂️ Because everyone knows private enterprise loves to deliver on the basis of equity and accessibility, and would never charge even higher fares than we have now. Councillors need to step up and do their job.
CTV News Ottawa@ctvnewsottawa.bsky.social · 4mo agoRural councillors want to explore private transit service in their wards
This is a win for transit riders - but the fight's not over. OC Transpo is in abysmal shape, yet this pilot won't even begin until 2027... This needs to be expedited and expanded (to include weekends and more 24/7 sections) and ultimately made permanent. www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
City committee approves plan to test bus-only lanes on Bank Street in the Glebe
A city committee has approved a pilot project that would install temporary and permanent bus-only lanes on a section of Bank Street in the Glebe.
ctvnews.ca
Faster boarding, higher ridership, fewer driver assaults - and less time and bureaucracy wasted punishing fare evaders! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/o...
Opinion | Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free
nytimes.com
Full text of remarks by Noah Vineberg, President of the union representing transit workers in Ottawa (ATU Local 279) to Transit Committee. He rightly notes many of those sitting on the committee are responsible for the crisis they are now decrying. freetransitottawa.ca/atu-to-city-...
ATU to City Hall: “You had the warnings, you had the authority, you chose to ignore both” | Free Transit Ottawa
freetransitottawa.ca
Ottawa needs more buses. We also need more dedicated lanes - to keep buses out of traffic and on schedule. Bus lanes can cut trip times in half and are badly needed on arteries like Bank, Carling, Baseline, Richmond and Rideau to speed up key routes like the 6, 7, 11, 85 and 88.
Ottawa is set to grow by 500,000 people in the next two decades. Will we provide good enough transit for all of them to get around, or sit by while tens of thousands of cars are added to our roads? www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
Number of Ottawa households to grow by 257,000 over next 25 years
The City of Ottawa is projecting a “sustained period of high housing demand” as the population grows to 1.68 million over the next 25 years, requiring a broad range of housing options and supporting i...
ctvnews.ca
Sutcliffe says this is a no-go because it would mean less money to invest in reliability, which they are also not doing. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Councillors seek compensation for transit riders after latest disruption | CBC News
Two Ottawa city councillors want to explore ways for OC Transpo to compensate riders for recent service disruptions, including a stopped LRT train that caused mayhem across Line 1 on Tuesday.
cbc.ca
We need emergency bus lane and transit priority measures enacted on key corridors to ensure our working buses are used as efficiently as possible. We can't have our limited bus fleet standing still in traffic.
Shawn Menard@shawnmenard.bsky.social · 7mo agoI’ve heard from many residents frustrated at the state of the bus service in #Ottawa. They are looking for answers. This needs to be treated like an emergency watermain repair. It is a critical service that can not be allowed to flounder in this way. Two immediate solutions need to be considered:
Great coverage of the Launch of our New Vision for Transit last night! Fabulous turnout of many fabulous people. Fun, community, and optimism brings people together! www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic....
Community group rolls out vision for free off-peak service on OC Transpo
A new organization called Free Transit Ottawa is looking for a few volunteers to help make their vision of transit in the capital a reality, which includes free transit during off-peak hours and on we...
ctvnews.ca
I love a good community event about an important municipal policy issue (public transit) featuring local musical talent 🚌🎶💛 @freetransitottawa.bsky.social
“It was haphazard to put all of the eggs in the electric bus basket. More buses are the only way we’re going to be able to offer the service that’s been posted and promised. But we are at a bit of a standstill with getting buses into the system.” www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
Waiting to go green: City lagging on electric bus targets, only a fraction in service so far
Councillors in Barrhaven are pushing the city to buy more diesel buses to help solve reliability issues as the city lags on its electric bus targets.
ctvnews.ca
Join us at Irene’s Pub on Monday January 19th for an evening of music, speakers, and community! It's time to build a movement around a set of bold ideas to deliver the transit we deserve – without barriers and which provides a real alternative to high emissions private vehicles.
To overcome many years of neglect, we must urgently tackle the fundamental issues with bus service — not in baby steps over the years and decades to come. A city focused on affordability, climate action, and good services is waiting. Let's fight for it, together.
We did it- 18 and Under Youth Pass is coming to #Ottawa as of July 1st, 2026. It will bring free transit for youth on weekends, holidays, after 5pm on weekdays and all day every day in the summer (July and August)!
Those fuel savings are all over the budget, all the result of external policy changes from another level of government. The City of Ottawa has no right to claim that as an achievement. The only action the City took was not to re-invest those transit savings back into improved transit service. 5/
The 2026 transit budget includes $47M in savings from uploading the LRT to Metrolinx... a deal the mayor admits won't be finalized for up to two years. Why are we claiming money we haven't saved yet? This creative accounting allows the City to appear spending while doing austerity.
"Pairing free buses with paid parking says we value people in motion more than cars at rest. Some drivers will denounce this as a cash grab. But for decades, the city has handed out billions in free public real estate to a small minority of residents." www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...
Opinion | This Is How Mamdani Can Pay for Free Buses
nytimes.com
In case anyone needed a better visual to show why the bus lane is "empty" and the car lane is "filled". It's pretty simple. Cars are realllyyyy bad at moving large amounts of people. They're definitely great for specific uses! But to rely on them for every single trip is where we have failed.
Strong Towns Ottawa@strongtownsottawa.ca · 8mo agoAhhh yes, the bus lane moving thousands of people an hour is causing the congestion, and not the car lane that gets backed up with 10 cars filled with a single person each 😭😭😭 Look at the picture, there's probably 15 people total causing this much traffic. Cars have been sold to you as a lie.
"The budget asks riders to pay more for the same unreliable service. The people who rely on it and the workers who deliver it live this every single day. We have less people riding our bus or trains because when they’ve gone to use it... it has let them down." -- Noah Vineberg, ATU 279 president
Plante roughly saying 'everyone's in the same boat with Transit having trouble' and that she couldn't find any cities that are successfully recovering. 15 second Google. globalnews.ca/news/9477981...
Bus ridership on Edmonton Transit returns to pre-pandemic levels: city - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca
Edmonton bus ridership reached 100 per cent of 2019 pre-pandemic levels in January 2023, averaging 1.2 million rides per week, the city said.
globalnews.ca
Cars Cars as far as the eye can see. We could replace pretty much every vehicle in this picture with two more buses.
Pete@peeete.bsky.social · 9mo agoI think I'll walk.
The 2026 draft Ottawa budget announces further delays to the Carling bus lane project, estimating the completion time for a bus lane project at 2035. This project was started in 2016 with designs released in 2017, which would make this be a 19 year long project just to install interim bus lanes.
