Hi Wyatt,
Thank you for reaching out and for sending me the Ward 1 scorecard. I spent
some time reviewing both your platform and the underlying City disclosures
because the issues you raise fit closely with something I have been talking
about throughout this campaign: we need to measure transit based on what
riders actually experience.
One point I noticed is that your research has evolved since the email was
drafted. Your website now identifies an additional $462,000 extension in
2024 and puts the total disclosed value associated with contract
33523-92002-G01 at *$1,157,794*, rather than approximately $700,000. I
appreciate that you published the correction transparently.
I am not prepared, without reviewing the complete contract and hearing from
staff, to conclude that the City received poor value or that sole-sourcing
was unjustified. The City's Procurement By-law permits non-competitive
procurement in certain circumstances. But its stated guiding principle is
also that procurement should generally be *open, transparent and fair*, and
expenditures of this magnitude deserve enough information for Council and
the public to assess value for money.
On your three requests:
*1. Public review: Yes.* I would support having the Transit Commission
receive a public accounting of this contract before any further material
extension, including its cumulative cost, term, deliverables, pricing
structure, performance measures, usage and the rationale for continuing
with a non-competitive arrangement.
The fact that an expenditure was properly authorized under delegated
authority does not mean Council should never subsequently examine whether
it continues to represent good value.
*2. Competitive procurement: Yes, with an appropriate qualification.* My
presumption for future rider-facing technology would be an open and
competitive process wherever practical. There can be legitimate
circumstances in which interoperability, intellectual property, continuity
or another procurement exception justifies a different process. Where that
occurs, however, I would expect the rationale to be clearly documented and
the City to demonstrate value for money.
*3. Open partnership framework: Yes in principle.* I am very interested in
the idea of allowing qualified third-party platforms to make productive use
of OC Transpo's open data and, where technically and legally appropriate,
establishing a framework through which useful crowdsourced information
could flow back to the City.
I would want staff to address data standards, privacy, cybersecurity,
accessibility, bilingual-service requirements and validation before the
City relied upon externally generated information operationally. But those
are implementation questions, not reasons to shut the door on innovation.
Your Ward 1 scorecard is particularly interesting to me because my platform
proposes an *Orléans Transit Reliability Guarantee*. I have argued that a
system-wide reliability percentage can conceal what an individual passenger
experiences. I want reporting that gets closer to the actual journey,
including route, time of day, waiting, transfers, missed connections and
total journey time.
So I would be interested in seeing how you calculate your 82% figure, what
limitations you have encountered using OC Transpo's data, and how your
crowdsourced reports complement the official feed.
I'd be happy to take you up on the offer of a 15-minute demonstration. Feel
free to send me a few times that work for you or coordinate with my
campaign.
Thank you as well for building something locally and making it available to
riders. Whether or not the City ultimately uses your particular platform, I
think Ottawa should be creating an environment in which local innovators
have a fair opportunity to demonstrate what they can do.
On Wed, Sep 9, 2026 at 9:35 PM Wyatt Baldwin · otranspo.ca <
hello@otranspo.ca> wrote:
> Dear Sherif Rizk,
>
> I'm an Ottawa resident, a transit rider, and the builder of otranspo.ca,
> an independent transit platform made in Ottawa. Before anything else, here
> is the live transit scorecard for Orléans East-Cumberland:
> otranspo.ca/en/city/wards/1. Right now it shows 82.0% of arrivals landing
> within five minutes of schedule, graded route by route from OC Transpo's
> own settled arrivals over the last fourteen days, next to a live map of the
> vehicles running through the ward and a plain list of what would fix the
> worst of it. Use it at the doors and in debates, no strings attached.
>
> Here is why I'm writing. Since 2023, the City has committed close to
> $700,000 to the Montreal company that makes the Transit app, all on one
> contract (33523-92002-G01). $282,000 for monitoring the real-time data,
> $180,000 to roll out the free Royale subscription, and another $233,794 in
> 2025 for rider surveys inside the app. There was no RFP, it was all
> sole-sourced under an exception in the Procurement By-law, and it never
> went to council for a vote, staff signed it under delegated authority. It's
> all in the City's own contract disclosures:
>
> Transit contracts awarded under delegated authority (PDF)
> <https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/default/files/Document%201%20%E2%80%93%20Transit%20Contracts%20awarded%20under%20delegated%20authority%20for%20the%20per_AODA.pdf>
>
> Contracts under delegation of authority, January 1 to June 30, 2025 (PDF)
> <https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/default/files/Contracts%20Under%20Delegation%20of%20Authority%20January%201%20to%20June%2030%202025-AODA.pdf>
>
> The disclosures also leave basic questions unanswered. Royale is a
> subscription product, so is the $180,000 a one-time cost or an annual one,
> and is it priced per rider or a flat fee? At Transit's advertised price of
> $24.99 a year, $180,000 only covers about 7,200 subscriptions in a city of
> a million people, and nobody can say what we actually bought because the
> term and pricing were never made public. The 2025 payment also means the
> City is paying a Montreal company to compile crowdsourced feedback from
> Ottawa's own riders.
>
> Across the river, the STO gets the same app for free. When Gatineau
> launched real-time tracking in Transit in 2019, the STO's president said
> publicly that the partnership cost nothing, because showing an agency's
> buses is Transit's free tier (Le Droit, Jan. 31, 2019: Le Droit report
> <https://ledroit.com/actualites/gatineau/sto-les-parcours-en-temps-reel-6ec8c8b15a3398d70012e209c2fcc63e>).
> What Ottawa paid for is the extras, monitoring the quality of the City's
> own data feed, sponsoring a premium subscription, and buying crowdsourced
> rider surveys.
>
> Riders already get those extras free on otranspo.ca, with independent
> scorecards for every ward, route and station, crowdsourced rider reports at
> otranspo.ca/en/report where riders log the no-show buses, crowding and
> breakdowns the official feed never records, and live tracking with
> real-time traffic. There is nothing to subscribe to, and it costs the City
> nothing.
>
> Ottawa already has the bones of a world class system. What we've lost is
> trust, and residents need to see the system working, not just be told that
> it works.
>
> So I'm asking you to commit to three things if you're elected:
>
> 1. A public review at Transit Commission of the sole-source Transit app
> contract, including its full cost, term, pricing structure, and
> performance, before it gets extended again.
>
> 2. Fair, open, competitive processes for rider-facing transit technology
> going forward.
>
> 3. An open partnership framework so qualified Ottawa-built platforms, mine
> included, can integrate with OC Transpo and share crowdsourced data back
> with the City.
>
> I'm publishing every candidate's answer on otranspo.ca before advance
> voting starts October 1, yes, no, or silence. I'd also welcome 15 minutes
> to show you or your team the platform.
>
> Respectfully,
> Wyatt Baldwin
> otranspo.ca
>
--
*Sherif Rizk*
*Candidate for City Councillor - Ward 1*
*Orléans East-Cumberland*
880 Taylor Creek Drive
Orléans, ON K4A 0Z9
Tel: 613-689-3522
Email: info@sherifrizk.ca