Parents across Stittsville have been telling me the same thing lately. They’re driving their college and university-aged children to Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, Algonquin College, and workplaces across the city because they don’t trust transit to get them where they need to go on time. I’ve also met young adults who are working hard to save for their first vehicle, knowing much of their income will immediately disappear into gas, insurance, and parking. Most concerning, I’ve met young transit users who are already planning their exit from the system as soon as they can afford another option.
These conversations have been wondering: what happens if we lose the next generation of transit riders?
We often talk about transit in terms of budgets, routes, schedules, and ridership numbers. But transit is also about habits. The way young people travel today will influence how they travel in the future. If a teenager grows up viewing transit as unreliable or inconvenient, they’re far less likely to choose it later in life. Once someone purchases a vehicle and builds their daily routine around driving, it can be difficult to convince them to make a different choice. The reality is that the impacts extend well beyond OC Transpo. More vehicles on the road mean more congestion, more pressure on our transportation network, greater demand for parking, and increased costs to maintain and expand infrastructure. For families, it can also mean significant transportation expenses at a time when affordability is already a challenge.
That’s one of the reasons I was encouraged to see Ottawa introduce free transit for youth this summer. Helping young people access jobs, recreation, volunteer opportunities, and community activities without needing a vehicle is a positive step. It gives youth a much-needed sense of independence while also providing an opportunity to become familiar and comfortable using transit. At the same time, it raises an interesting question: should we be thinking about youth transit as an investment rather than simply a subsidy?
Other municipalities are already exploring that idea. In Kingston, a pilot project launched in 2012 providing free transit passes to Grade 9 students. Since then, the program has expanded to include all high school students. What I find particularly interesting is that Kingston Transit staff visit schools each year to teach students how to navigate routes, load bicycles onto buses, and understand basic transit etiquette so they can use the system confidently and respectfully. The goal isn’t simply to provide free rides. It’s to build familiarity and confidence so that transit becomes a normal part of everyday life.
Ottawa’s summer program is a positive start and I think we should be open to exploring whether a more permanent approach makes sense. Of course, affordability is only one piece of the puzzle. Young people won’t continue using transit because it’s free. They’ll continue using it if it gets them where they need to go, when they need to get there.
As a city, we spend a lot of time talking about ridership recovery. But I wonder if we should also be talking about rider recruitment. If a generation of young people decides transit isn’t worth using, it will become much harder to build the system we want in the future.