Note from Jeff: I want to thank Ben Kerr-Wilson who is in my office for a few months as part of his course work for his government relations studies. He has been working on communications and briefing materials in support of some of the policy directions that I and the team are pursuing. As part of Council’s recent transit budget discussions my priority was to avoid further cuts to service as a strategy to deal with fare revenue shortfalls. We avoided those, but we’ll need to be vigilant against those coming back on the table.
A study of Montreal’s transit service, released in April of this year, presents a grim warning for transit services considering frequency cuts post-pandemic. It suggests a 10 per cent cut in service frequency could reduce ridership by as much as 15 per cent. The study, If You Cut It Will They Ride? by McGill’s Ahmed El-Geneidy, warns that addressing ridership shortages with cuts poses the genuine risk of starting a death spiral, where cuts depress ridership, further driving cuts.
Key Findings from the Study
The study utilized data from 169 bus routes in Montreal between 2018 and 2022, excluding periods of strict health restrictions, to capture longer-term shifts in commuter behavior. One of the main findings is that transit users are now even more sensitive to frequency changes than before the pandemic. With more people owning cars, working from home, and using alternative forms of transportation, slight cuts—like changing a bus route from every 10 minutes to every 15—can push riders to abandon public transit entirely.
While the study uses data from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), its findings are pertinent for decision-makers in any jurisdiction. Understanding how sensitive ridership is to service changes is essential when deciding when and where to cut costs.
Shifting Commuting Behaviors
The pandemic has fundamentally changed how we live and work, extending to our relationship with public transit. The rise of work-from-home options, active transportation, and expanding car ownership has given commuters new flexibility in how and when they travel. This study finds that even small changes in frequency can significantly impact the customer experience and often subject riders to overcrowding or forcing them to check a schedule.
Suppose a rider’s regular route changes from every 10 minutes to every 15 that small change in wait time may encourage them to work from home or switch to driving. This new dynamic is not one of captive riders who will adjust their commute to the new schedule; instead, it involves consumers making decisions in a crowded marketplace, where changes to frequency will push users to other transport options.
In Montreal, El-Geneidy found an increase of nine per cent in ridership on routes branded as having a 10-minute maximum wait. Conversely, routes that saw a reduction in frequency experienced the most severe ridership drops. This reinforces his finding that ridership is more sensitive to frequency changes post-pandemic.
El-Geneidy notes, “Reductions in service have been concentrated in high-frequency routes: the bottom percentiles had the highest mean number of trips before the pandemic. Almost 80 per cent of routes historically identified as 10-Minute Max routes…were in the bottom 25 percentiles. The last column demonstrates the high association between route reductions and ridership decline, with the routes suffering the greatest service reductions having the greatest ridership decline.”
Lessons for Ottawa
Ottawa faces some difficult choices this year, and this study serves as both a warning and a roadmap. As the city looks at a $120 million deficit in the transit budget, service cuts may initially seem like an appealing cost-saving measure. However, as this study shows, service cuts damage the reliability and attractiveness of the service, harming ridership and worsening our fiscal situation.
As Ottawa continues to rebuild ridership and expand LRT coverage, we have the opportunity to position public transit as a reliable, convenient, and attractive service. Significant service cuts will undermine trust in transit, pushing away existing riders and deterring new ones. In this new reality, the solution is not to undermine transit’s appeal with service cuts. Instead, now is the time to invest in transit. Public transit must be reliable, safe, and frequent – ensuring it becomes the most attractive way to access all that Ottawa has to offer.