OC Transpo says the first of its new 60-foot articulated buses has arrived and is now in service, offering more space for passengers. The purchase of 52 new 60-foot diesel buses was approved in the 2025 budget. On Monday, OC Transpo said one of them has now arrived and has entered service, and as many as 19 more will be on the roads by the end of this year. “Manufactured by New Flyer, the Xcelsior XD60 is a high-capacity, 60-foot articulated bus. It is made to move more customers efficiently across the transit network. Each bus can hold about 120 passengers and has 53 seats,” OC Transpo said in a news release. This would be the largest capacity bus in the fleet. According to OC Transpo’s vehicle stats, most 40-foot buses have 36 seats with capacity for up to 68 passengers, while older articulated buses such as the New Flyer D60LF and New Flyer D60LFR have 55 seats with capacity for up to 110 passengers in total. The 10 double-decker buses in the fleet can hold up to 96 passengers, but have the most seats—86. The new XD60 buses will be air-conditioned and will have improved interior information screens, similar to the new 40-foot zero-emission buses that have been arriving this year. Unlike other articulated buses in the fleet, these ones do not appear to have seats inside the articulated area. This past summer, OC Transpo announced a plan to refurbish 30 existing 60-foot articulated buses at an average cost of $180,000 per bus, to maintain fleet numbers, after several issues with bus availability over the winter, causing thousands of trip cancellations. The City of Ottawa had originally planned to buy 60-foot articulated electric buses, but scrapped that plan in 2024 because of market limitations, opting instead to buy more than 300 of the shorter 40-foot electric buses. OC Transpo says by fall 2027, 50 per cent of the conventional bus fleet will be replaced with electric buses.
