Nearly two years ago, Ottawa appointed Mathieu Grondin as the city's Nightlife Commissioner in an effort to inject some energy back into its atrophied nightlife. Largely the sentiments towards this position have changed very little in the years since, with seemingly the city in agreement that not enough has changed to warrant the six-figure salary the position grants, and an endless stream of jokes about Ottawa's absent 'Night Mayor'.

While I believe that Ottawa's night life is far from its death bed, it is certainly far from where it could be as Canada's capital city. While I appreciate the municipal efforts to improve things, I believe there is a far more effective way to put the life back into Ottawa at night, and one that is fairly simple.

A Tale of Two (Capital) Cities

The following two figures show Ottawa's (right) and Quebec City's (left) official night bus systems.

While the Ottawa map is stylized and the Quebec City map is strictly geographic, looking past this, it is easy to see there are far more options at night in La Belle Province's capital city. Indeed, while Ottawa has just 6 nighttime routes, Quebec City has more than double, at 13. This comparison becomes increasingly embarrassing when noted that according to StatsCan, Ottawa-Gatineau's population sits at a hefty 1.7 million as of 2026, while Quebec City has not even crossed 1 million, sitting at 900k. Even excluding the Gatineau portion of the National Capital Region, whose own transit service, STO, provides no overnight options, the Ottawa side has a population of 1.3 million.

Using both cities' publicly available GTFS specifications, I was able to calculate the exact sizes of each city's official night service network. Not only is Quebec City's network nearly double the size of Ottawa's, but looking at distance as a function of total population paints a bleaker picture, showing that Quebec City has more than double Ottawa's night service km per 100k people.

Note these calculations were done with Ottawa's smaller, Ontario only population figures.

Seeing these figures, it is not difficult to understand why Ottawa's nightlife is struggling. Quebec City's network embarrasses our own, and I believe the struggles with nightlife are inexorably tied to this problem.

Serving the few, failing the many

People need to get home after a night out. Plain and simple. More coverage by a night bus network means more people are able to get home by bus. Ottawa's pitiful night network doesn't even cover some of the densest neighbourhoods in the capital, a fact that is obvious when looking at the night network drawn over a population density map.

What can be done?

Proposed night bus network. View in pdf here.

I propose an upgrade to the night bus system. This proposal includes the following changes:

• Extending the hours of the 6, 41, 74, 85, 88 to officially qualify them as night buses. The 6 and 74 will run their short turn trips, between Rideau/Billings Bridge and Limebank/Fallowfield respectively.

• Extending the hours of the 25 to officially qualify it as a night bus, while modifying its route away from Blair road and station, straight down Innes/Industrial with a stop at St Laurent before terminating at Hurdman. This improves connectivity to other night routes as well as covers the east end of line 1, since these buses will run after it shuts down.

• Extending the hours of the 12 to officially qualify it as a night bus, while extending its route past Blair station to Innes to connect with the 25 and serve the stops along Blair road usually covered by the 25. In the west the 12 will terminate at Lyon rather than the daytime terminus of Tunney's Pasture

• Adding a new route, the N2, which will serve Bronson, paralleling line 2 slightly more east to serve downtown, then getting on the transitway at Heron to directly parallel the line 2 replacement bus, being extended south to serve the entirety of line 2 as is currently done by early morning trips on the 105.

• Extending routes 39, 45 and 105 west past Rideau to Lyon in order to cover the entirety of Downtown.

• Serving Stittsville via the N61 all night.

• Extending the N57 to serve Bells Corners all night

How far away is this goal?

Closer than you'd think.

Two charts displaying the departures per hour for the proposed, and current night buses respectively.

Diving into the schedules of each of these buses, it is revealed that not all current 'night' buses run all night long. On the above graphs I've marked most departures (red), average departures (yellow) and least departures (blue). As can be seen, some night buses have no departures between 2am and 3am, while others have no departures between 3am and 4am. Comparatively, some routes without official night bus notation nearly match the frequency of some night buses, even exceeding them for departures in the 10pm-11pm and 5am-6am hours. The 12 for example has at least one departure for every hour of the night except 3am-4am, which is consistent with some night buses.

Comparing the departures of the 12 directly to the departures of the 61, which is a night bus, one can see that the 12 is only one departure away (between 2am and 3am) from having the same service level as the 61. On top of this, both the 6 and 88 are likewise only two departures away from the same service level.

If half of these are basically already night buses according to their scheduling, why bother with any of this?

I'm glad you asked, me in a quote block. The answer is simple. Most people are not transit freaks like yours truly. A night bus with no indication of its late-night hours is useless! Half of transit planning is communication! If a tree falls etcetera and so forth. Sidebar over.

Looking at the rest of the proposed night routes, there is work to be done, as some currently don't run at all between the hours of 1am and 4am, including the 25, 41, 74, 85. In my opinion, a night bus should have at least one departure for every hour, meaning that each of these would need an additional three departures.

Running the numbers, we would need a total of 17 additional trips to elevate each of these routes to my standard of 'night bus', at least on the average weekday. While this might sound like a lot, keep in mind this is across 7 routes.

Conclusion

While I believe this is a realistic ask, I am not (yet) a transit planner or an employee of OC Transpo.

At the end of the day, I can only run so many numbers and write so many paragraphs. I suppose the rest is up to you, to share and to email your councilors, pleading for a complete night bus network worthy of Canada's capital city.

If you've read this far, thank you for coming on this journey with me. This is the first article I have written, as night buses are something very close to my heart. I'm also leaving Ottawa this week, probably for good. So functionally, this is my goodbye to my first and only home. I hope Ottawa grows in my absence, I hope our transit gets better, and I hope we can build a vibrant night life on its back. Thanks

If you'd like to hear more from me, you can follow me on Bluesky

@ellaprimeau.com

. I also have an Instagram dedicated to bus content, at @ellalikesbuses. If you've really resonated with all this yapping and would like to support me, you can do that on kofi.

Thank you and remember to spread love <3