OC Transpo's top boss admits mismanagement was the reason buses were left to freeze over the New Year's break, leading to hundreds of cancelled bus trips during the first work week in January.

Alain Mercier appeared before a city committee Wednesday to explain why more than 200 bus trips were cancelled on Jan. 4 and Jan. 5.

He said two junior supervisors were in charge of keeping the buses ready for use, and they simply lost track, putting 52 buses out-of-service as a result.

"The risk of inexperience at that moment in time means that perhaps the right questions weren't asked or those kinds of things and that's part of the risk of having a manual system to do things," said Mercier.

He said a new automated system is being put in place to flag buses that need to be serviced.

Angry riders

However, broken down buses are just one of the problems plaguing OC Transpo. Riders are also angry about a 7.5 per cent fare hike, as well as a proposed budget cut that would kill nearly 50 bus routes across the city.

Many riders are also still frustrated by a transit strike that lasted for almost two months in the dead of winter.

"We pay so much for an OC Transpo bus pass and these guys don't care about us.

Change needed

A new management team has been recruited over the past year to fix some of the problems at OC Transpo. However, Mercier said the managers are having a hard time working with a transit system that has been running unstructured for years.

At least one Ottawa councillor is demanding someone be fired. Coun. Rainer Bloess said those changes need to come from the top down.

"At some point there are repercussions if the service can't be provided, it's not reliable, and costs increase, you have to look at how the organization is run," said Bloess. "It always starts at the top."

Double-decker buses

Mercier also told the committee a new $90-million garage that's being built in Ottawa is big enough to service the city's new double-decker buses.

The city is currently testing three double-decker buses in a pilot project until the end of March.

Mercier said there would only be a problem servicing those buses if the city decided to move to an entire fleet of double-decker buses, which would mean OC Transpo's existing garages would have to be retrofitted.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's John Hua