New ways to understand New Ways to Bus

Hi friends!

It’s very suddenly the end of the weekend, and I haven’t sent my weekly note yet. I’ve spent much of my downtime in the past few days working on a project.

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On April 27, 2025, OC Transpo launched “New Ways to Bus” (NWTB), “the largest bus service change in the City’s history”.

OC Transpo has produced great material to understand how specific routes have changed. Their travel planner (or mapping tools like Transit, Google Maps, or Apple Maps) is also great for figuring out how to get where you need to using the new network.

But it’s hard to really wrap your head around a change of this size. How have service levels changed throughout the day? Where is more or less served now than before?

I built a site that tries to answer some of those questions.

It’s not quite ready for prime-time yet, so, as with when I shared the Public Order Emergency Commission Explorer a few years back, you’re getting a bit of a preview. If you can, hold off on sharing this around too widely for a day or two, while I polish off a few rough spots and add a feature or two. (Most importantly, I’ll replace “current schedule” with “previous schedule” or something like that! 😭)

I have a list of improvements that I’d like to make—some now, others down the line.¹ (I keep thinking of new ways to analyse this data—but am trying to prioritize getting a v1 out the door, no matter how long my list of other interesting analyses!)

Most importantly, I’d love to hear from you, if you have a chance to check it out. I welcome any and all feedback, ideas, questions, and so on. (And, if you’re really keen, pull requests!) If you do check it out, even if you don’t feel up to sharing any feedback, thank you—I really do appreciate the enthusiasm and support.

So, excuse the lack of (non-meta) links this week—I hope it’s been a good one. All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas