Public rider information
Report moderation
The short version
Accounts are optional. Every report is private on submission and requires authorized review before aggregate publication.
Ownership and accountability
Who is responsible for Otranspo
- Owner and operator
- One independent Ottawa–Gatineau citizen, named on the independence page
- Service responsibility
- The owner named above owns Otranspo and is accountable for its product, operations, privacy decisions, security response, and public explanations.
- Editorial control
- The owner named above makes the final editorial and publishing decisions. Transit agencies, cities, data providers, hosting companies, analytics providers, and donors do not direct coverage or conclusions.
- Funding model
- The owner named above bears the project’s operating costs. Otranspo carries no advertising. If voluntary donations are available, they do not buy access, favourable coverage, or editorial control.
- Official status
- Otranspo is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by OC Transpo, STO, the City of Ottawa, or the Ville de Gatineau. It supplements official information and does not run transit service.
- Application explanation reviewed
- September 14, 2026
- Next source review due
- October 14, 2026
This review compares the public explanation with the current application source and configured capability rules. It is not a legal opinion or proof that a pending source revision has reached production. Current service health and published corrections have their own evidence pages.
Review standard
- Remove or quarantine personal information, harassment, threats, and irrelevant content.
- Keep safety, operator, and identifiable-person reports out of public aggregates.
- Confirm only evidence that is relevant, time-bounded, and suitable for a minimum-cohort aggregate.
- Record every staff decision in an immutable audit event with the authorized actor and request correlation.
Privacy, appeal, and removal
Precise location used to verify a nearby crowding report is not stored. Report descriptions and stop details are encrypted and never appear in a public aggregate.
A signed-in submitter may use the privacy workflow for access, correction, withdrawal, deletion, or appeal. An anonymous submitter can cite the private receipt number to the privacy or moderation contact; the receipt is not a public share link.
Emergency and immediate-safety matters belong with 9-1-1 or the official transit operator, not this community report form.
Technical record
Methods, assurance checks, and release evidence for people who need to inspect them.
Anonymous and account reports
The same form, validation, safety handling, encryption, rate limits, and moderation standard apply with or without an account. Account status does not prove a claim and never outranks safety or accessibility evidence.
After moderation, an anonymous observation contributes 0.6 and an account observation contributes 1.0 to published weighted-evidence strength. Because Otranspo does not retain a durable network identifier, anonymous rows cannot prove distinct people and never satisfy the public cohort by themselves. A public group requires five distinct accounts; anonymous weight is then capped at 0.6 per qualifying account.
- Anonymous reporting may be disabled immediately if the shared anti-abuse control is unavailable or an authorized operator activates the kill switch.
- Repeated account submissions count as one qualifying account in the same public group. Anonymous submissions remain private until the account cohort is met, are rate-limited, and must each survive moderation.
- Signing in after submission does not link the existing report. Any future linking requires a separate, explicit choice.