How citizen-led data tools are filling knowledge gaps about Ottawa’s transit system

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O-Train No. 1165 was the first to greet me at Bayview Station as I stood on the Line 1 eastbound platform on a sunny, yet crisp Friday morning in Ottawa.

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It was just another day at the office for this train, which has been something of a workhorse over the past three weeks, gliding across the tracks almost every day since Jan. 23 with little time to rest.

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How do I know about the recent workload of train 1165? Well, I spent half an hour standing at Bayview Station on Friday, counting trains and inputting my findings into a crowdsourced data tool created by Rail Fans Canada.

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The tool provides a snapshot of how many trains are in service on Line 1 on any given day. Since it’s entirely crowdsourced, anyone can contribute. All that’s required is the train number (posted on both the exterior and interior of the train), along with the location and direction of travel.

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For risers frustrated by cancellations and reduced service, these tools offer insights that official updates often lack: real-time, ground-level insight into what’s actually happening on the tracks and the roads.

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How does crowdsourcing O-Train data work?

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The original version of the O-Train tracking tool launched in 2019 alongside the opening of Line 1. At the time, it was largely used by rail enthusiasts eager to log different trains on the tracks and to keep track of whether they’d ridden every vehicle in the fleet.

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But interest waned and after about a year the software went offline, says Shane Seguin, editor-in-chief of Rail Fans Canada.

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That changed on Jan. 23, when Ottawa transit officials announced that nearly three-quarters of the Line 1 fleet would be sidelined. Seguin saw it as an opportunity to revive the tool, and he immediately got to work.

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“Now with the new situation of the limited number of trains available, it was interesting to bring it back so we could follow how many trains are actually operating, which ones have been seen, how long they’ve been missing and to just sort of give an oversight of what the situation really is on a day-to-day basis,” Seguin says.

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For three weeks, Seguin and a team of regular contributors have been logging how many trains are on the tracks each day, focusing especially on morning and afternoon peak periods.

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Even local councillors like Jeff Leiper have been contributing to the data set, which Seguin describes as “good validation” that citizen-led tools fill an information gap and support transparency around transit operations.

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Rail Fans Canada has also set up live-stream cameras at Bayview and Cyrville stations with nearby residents volunteering their views of the tracks there. At Cyrville, the camera angle is close enough for train numbers to be visible, and Seguin regularly reviews an hour of video during peak periods to make sure the rush-hour data is complete.

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In recent weeks, Seguin says the crowdsourced findings have closely aligned with official figures provided by OC Transpo. The transit agency reported 21 train cars available as of the Feb. 12 transit committee meeting.

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From there, Seguin says Rail Fans Canada aims to provide context, showing how those 21 trains are deployed and what a typical peak period actually looks like on the tracks.

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“(OC Transpo) is giving some information, but obviously they’re not giving all the information, so that’s where we’re coming in,” he says. “We can say, ‘Well, for the most part, they’ve been running 15 trains in the morning and 15 trains in the afternoon over the course of a full day.’”

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Not every available train is expected to run daily. Seguin says the others serve as spares if a train needs to be taken out of service so that frequency and capacity can be maintained. Sometimes, he added, one or two trains are swapped between morning and afternoon peak periods.

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While there’s an accountability aspect to it, Seguin says citizen-led data is mainly about providing insight on the inner workings of the transit system that may not be available on official channels.

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“As a taxpayer and a transit user, I’d like to know what’s going on,” he says. “This is one of those ways where, even if the official channel isn’t putting something together, by doing it unofficially we’re able to share this information to enlighten people as to what’s going on. And hopefully it leads to more transparency.”

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What about the buses?

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Ajay Ramachandran, the main developer of the software, spent several weeks building a software cross-referencing OC Transpo’s daily schedules with minute-by-minute bus tracking data. His software captures metrics such as delays, cancellations and route reliability, which can all be filtered by time of day.

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“What we can do is we can actually look back at the data and say, ‘OK, at this specific time of day, or during this peak period, how was the bus reliability?’” Ramachandran says.

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The platform now features several dashboards tracking cancellations, the average delay time on each route and the number of buses in service.

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While OC Transpo publishes average reliability statistics on its website, Ramachandran says daily averages paint a better picture than the transit system realities by combining peak and off-peak performances.

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In comparison, the Better Transit Ottawa software isolates morning and afternoon periods to provide what Ramachandran calls “a more realistic estimate of how people actually experience the system.”

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“OC Transpo will publish 96 per cent of buses were available … but, if we look at the peak period from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on certain routes we’re sometimes getting closer to a 75-per-cent delivery rate with (upwards of) 25 per cent cancelled,” he says.

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Although cancellations have decreased in recent weeks, Ramachandran cautions that the improvement has coinciding with schedule changes that slashed nearly 400 daily trips in January.

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“Even if things are looking a bit better, it’s important to remind ourselves that there have been service cuts. Once both those numbers are going back up, that’s when we’ll be in a better place,” he says. “But I expect there might be further cuts if they want to keep being honest.”

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The tool was originally developed to support advocacy for improved peak service, but Ramachandran says he intends to refine it to make it more accessible to everyday riders. The goal is to help commuters spot chronically delayed or cancelled trips before they head out the door.

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Unlike the system developed by Rail Fans Canada, the bus reliability tool isn’t crowd-sourced, meaning everyday commuters can’t directly input data, but each of them is a citizen-led effort with the same purpose: to gain a better understanding of the realities plaguing Ottawa’s transit network.

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“I think the only way to actually get the real data out there is by using these citizen-led data tools,” Ramachandran says. “The way I see it, we’re basically saying what OC Transpo wants to say, but is not able to.”

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