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The $700K Transit app deal council never voted on, and an Ottawa-built alternative
Dear Councillor Hill,
I'm an Ottawa resident, a transit rider, and the builder of otranspo.ca, an independent transit platform made in Ottawa. I'm writing because you're both a sitting Member of Council and a candidate in October's election.
First, in transparency: because part of what I'm asking for could benefit my platform, I wrote to the City's Integrity Commissioner before sending this and asked whether it counts as lobbying. Her office advised that pre-registration is not required and asked me to report back once I had made contact. I am sending her office a copy of these communications, and I will register in the Lobbyist Registry if her office determines that registration applies. Doing things the right way is the whole reason otranspo.ca exists.
Here is what I want you to know. Since June 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 crowdsourced rider surveys through its Rate-My-Ride feature. There was no RFP, it was all sole-sourced under Section 22(1)(d) of the Procurement By-law, and it never came to you for a vote, staff signed it under delegated authority. It's all in the City's own contract disclosures:
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: 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 https://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, a fully grade-separated O-Train spine and one of the most extensive bus rapid transit networks on the continent. 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:
1. Support a public review at Transit Commission of the sole-source Transit app contract, including its full cost, term, pricing structure, and performance, before it is extended again.
2. Commit to fair, open, competitive processes for rider-facing transit technology going forward.
3. Support an open partnership framework so qualified Ottawa-built platforms, mine included, can integrate with OC Transpo and share crowdsourced data back with the City, at a fraction of what we commit now.
I'm publishing every candidate's position on otranspo.ca before advance voting starts October 1. I'd welcome 15 minutes to show you or your staff the platform, starting with the live scorecard for Barrhaven West: https://otranspo.ca/en/city/wards/3
Respectfully, Wyatt Baldwin otranspo.ca
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