OC Transpo publishes key metrics after 7-year lull

After a seven-year hiatus, OC Transpohas started providing the public with regular updates again on how many people are taking transit, how often buses are late, and other key metrics.

The agency used to publish reports about itsperformance every quarter but stopped in 2014 for construction of the Confederation Line, which opened in September 2019. It said it would come up with new performance indicators to track once the system relaunched with LRT as its spine.

"It's good to see data, it's been a long time coming" said Coun.Riley Brockington, who had a successful motion at city council in 2019 callingfor OC Transpo to resume its datareports."It's a good first start."

Earlier this year, the commission approved nearly a dozenmeasurements for staff to report on twice annually, covering areas such as ridership, OC Transpo's response times for customers, andhow often buses, trains and Para Transpo arrive on time.

The contents of the first report include many statistics for 2020, a year that will be difficult to use as a comparison in future years given the major impacts ofCOVID-19.

It showed ridership for the year was 58 per cent lower than in 2019, and OC Transpohad far fewer contacts with its customers.

Data showed that in 2019 before the pandemic, the average time to respond to a customer call was 47 minutes, which citizen commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert called "ridiculously slow."Most of those phone calls were for bookings on Para Transpo, a system customers have long complained about. The transit department is now implementing online booking.

Commissioners also questioned the customer injury rate, which only captures incidents so severe that people are taken to hospital. Commissioners said that would leave out everything fromslips and falls toharassment, whichcould help provide a fuller picture of safety on OC Transpo.

Transit staff said in future reports they would look to include lesser injuries in which paramedics are called. They would also include data on criminal code offences.

In addition to reports to the transit commission, OC Transpo plans to publish monthly scorecards on its website.