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Ask any regular user of OC Transpo about missing a bus because of a cancelled trip and you’re almost guaranteed to hear a story.

Maybe someone will tell you about being stranded on a freezing cold day, waiting for a scheduled bus that never showed. Maybe someone will tell you about how they were late for work, or missed a class, because their bus never came.

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But how often are OC Transpo rides actually cancelled? The Citizen endeavoured to find out, asking the transit agency for trip cancellation data.

It turns out there’s a reason people often have a story to tell.

Over a 29-day period in February and March, there were 6,284 cancelled bus trips in Ottawa, according to the provided data.

During that nearly one-month period, the fewest bus cancellations on a given day was 20 and the most was 883.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Postmedia

However, the data also show that about 97 per cent of scheduled trips, on average, are completed each day. The lion’s share of cancellations occur on weekdays, with a daily average of 283 cancellations. There are far fewer cancellations on weekends, when service is reduced, with a daily average of 41 cancellations.