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Ottawa Citizen

OC Transpo ending SMS notifications for bus cancellations

Article content OC Transpo is ending SMS notifications for bus trip cancellations starting on Thursday, a move being criticized by transit advocates. Article content Article content SMS and email alerts are input manually whenever a bus trip is cancelled, said OC Transpo in a statement. The process can be time-consuming and sometimes incomplete or inaccurate. Article content The new system, which will automate notifications of cancelled bus trips through the Transit app, aims to provide more accurate information, according to OC Transpo. Bus users can sign up for push alerts to get notified of any changes to their trips. Article content Article content Article content 'OC Transpo will continue to work on improving real time information for customers and further upgrades are planned,' said director of transit customer systems and planning Pat Scrimgeour in a statement. Article content But public transit advocates say thousands will be affected by the changes. According to data from OC Transpo, there were 3,500 subscribers to OC Transpo's SMS and email alerts service and around 35,000 Transit app users in 2024. Article content The change will affect marginalized groups like the elderly, youth who don't have a smart phone and people with disabilities, said software developer Justin Kelly of Occasional Transportation, an online tool introduced in 2019 to help transit users track LRT disruptions. The move will affect those who do not have the time nor resources to organize and speak up, he said. Article content Article content OC Transpo is facing a deficit, while at the same time providing a service to a dwindling number of users, he said. Article content Article content 'Sending text messages isn't cheap, and (OC Transpo is) basically looking at the services that they render,' Kelly said an interview on Tuesday afternoon. Article content Kelly contends that the Transit app is notoriously unreliable and often shows cancelled buses minutes after they were supposed to show up, or that have 'magically teleported' to a location 30 minutes away. Article content 'People are still talking about teleporting buses and ghost buses, which have been a problem since I came to Ottawa 20 years ago,' Kelly said. Article content 'People like the SMS system more because when (OC Transpo says a bus) is cancelled, it's logging in their phone.' Article content The cancelled and ghost buses, along with delayed cancellation alerts on the Transit app, have made people wary of OC Transpo, said Kelly, who called it the 'transit death cycle.' People stop using public transportation because it's not serving the destinations where people need to go, which causes OC Transpo to scale back service, he said.