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If Winnipeg Transit users have noticed buses are running late more often than they used to, they’re not imagining things.

According to data compiled by Transit, the percentage of weekday buses that are late has increased from 7.3% in 2009 to 11% in 2016. Buses were early 8.8% of the time on average in 2016, largely unchanged from 8.5% in 2009. And overall, the percentage of time weekday buses were considered to be on-time has fallen to 80.3% from 84.2% during that period.

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That may seem like a small change in percentage terms. But applied to the 48.5 million riders that took the bus in Winnipeg in 2016, 4% represents nearly 2 million more rides a year where buses were not on time.

The data raises more questions than it answers, though, since the degree to which buses are late is just as important – maybe more important – than the percentage of buses not running on time. A bus that’s four or five minutes late is very different than one that is 15-20 minutes off-schedule. However, the data doesn’t break down into that level of detail.