Ottawa Airport to Downtown: Line 4, Bus 105 and Taxi

From Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier (YOW) into the core you pay one adult OC Transpo fare of C$4.10 on the O-Train or the bus, or you take a metered City of Ottawa taxi that starts at C$3.80 plus distance and adds an airport pickup fee on top. There’s no flat downtown taxi board - blogs that invent one aren’t reading the by-law. Line 4 leaves from Level 3 of the terminal; Route 105 covers the hours when the trains stop.

Older blog posts still shout Route 97. Its airport service ended in April 2025, when Line 4 took the run. The rail spur and Route 105 are what YOW posts on its own ground-transportation page in 2026, and that’s what you should plan around.

Price and time, without the blog math

Kids 10 and under ride free on OC Transpo, with one catch at the gate: the free ride is tapped through with a Child card, and OC Transpo hands those out at the Rideau Centre Customer Service Centre downtown, not at the airport. A family landing at YOW won’t have one yet, so the bus is the easier first hop with small children. A DayPass caps at C$12.25 if you’re tapping the same card all day.

Line 4 to South Keys, then north on Line 2

Airport Station sits on Level 3 at the north end of the terminal - follow the O-Train signs after baggage claim, not the Arrivals curb. Line 4 is the short airport spur: it runs to South Keys, where you cross to Line 2 toward Bayview. At Bayview you catch Line 1 into the Confederation corridor for Rideau, Parliament and the Centretown hotels.

YOW lists Line 4 as 6:00 am to midnight. OC Transpo’s own Line 4 sheet is a touch more precise on Sundays (7:30 am to 11:30 pm) and Saturdays (from 6:30 am). Weekday trains are roughly every 12 minutes; weekends stretch toward 24 minutes. Tap Presto, a contactless bank card or mobile wallet at the fare gate - or buy a ticket at the machine outside the station - and one C$4.10 fare carries the whole chain: OC Transpo allows a transfer time of 90 to 105 minutes, comfortably more than the airport run needs.

The part nobody prints on the arrivals screen is that the chain is only as open as its last link, and the last link is Line 1. Line 2 keeps Line 4’s hours, but Line 1 shuts at 11 pm on Sundays while Line 4 is still running until 11:30 - board late on a Sunday evening and you can reach Bayview after the downtown trains have gone home. Sunday morning has the mirror problem: Line 4 starts at 7:30 am, Line 1 not until 8. The rest of the week Line 1 runs to 1 am, and to 2 am on Friday and Saturday nights, so the chain holds right up to the Line 4 shutdown. Outside those windows the answer is the bus, not the platform.

Budget the transfers honestly. The rail is traffic-free, but you’re changing platforms twice before you’re standing under the Peace Tower. Travellers who treat it like a single direct airport express usually feel cheated; travellers who treat it like a city network fare with two clean changes usually don’t.

Route 105 when the trains sleep

Route 105 is the bus YOW documents today: 24 hours a day, about every 30 minutes. By day it links the airport and Uplands with St-Laurent Station, where you connect to Line 1 and intercity buses or VIA at Tremblay. Overnight, when Line 1 isn’t running, the service takes the number N105 and continues north of Hurdman to Rideau Station - that’s the overnight path into the core without waiting for Line 4 to reopen. Watch for the N on the head sign; it’s the same link under a night number.

Board on the Departures roadway, Level 3, north end. Pay with exact cash or tap Presto / credit / debit / mobile. Same adult fare as the train. Ticket machines also sit at the south end of Level 1 if you’d rather buy before you climb to the curb.

If a travel site still sells you Route 97 as the airport bus, close the tab. The order went like this: Line 4 opened on 6 January 2025, the train replaced Route 97’s airport service that April, and Route 105 arrived on 24 August 2025, taking over the overnight N98 and part of Route 197. Planning on the old number leaves you standing at a stop that no longer matches the map in your pocket.

Metered taxis and the airport pickup fee

Taxis queue outside the centre door on Level 1 Arrivals. Drop-off is upstairs on Level 3. Accessible vehicles are available if you ask the attendant at the stand.

Ottawa does not run a posted flat downtown zone from YOW. Schedule B of the Vehicle-for-Hire By-law sets a meter: C$3.80 for the first 150 metres, then C$0.18 for each 86 metres, plus C$0.18 for each 24 seconds of waiting time while you’re engaged. On top of that, Council added an airport-pickup line to the meter, charged on YOW pickups only. It went on at C$5.56 on 1 September 2023, and the same motion handed the Chief License Inspector standing authority to raise it every year under the airport licence agreement, so three annual cycles have run since. The published Schedule B doesn’t carry an airport line at all, and the sites quoting an exact 2026 figure are recycling the 2023 one. Budget about C$5.50 to C$6, then read the actual amount off the receipt. The floor isn’t a single printed downtown number - it’s flag + distance + waiting + that airport line.

On a clear mid-day run toward Centretown that often lands in the low-to-mid thirties before tip; snow, the Airport Parkway crawl, or a hotel farther into the Glebe pushes it higher. Confirm the meter is on before the trunk closes, and ignore any site that quotes a fake flat “C$40 to downtown” as if it were a by-law board.

Rideshare pillars and a booked car

Uber and Lyft pick up at pillars 12 and 13 on the curb furthest from the terminal - not at the taxi centre door. Check the pin in the app; walking out the wrong door with a luggage cart is the classic first-visit mistake at YOW. Pricing is dynamic, so open the app at the belt and compare it to what the taxi meter will do with the airport fee included. Quiet Tuesday mornings often favour the app; Friday night conference landings often don’t.

A pre-booked transfer locks the price before you leave home and puts a driver in Arrivals with your name. Same roads as the taxi, prepaid instead of metered, and useful when your flight lands after Line 4 has shut and you don’t want to parse Route 105 with three suitcases in February.

Bags, clock, and which curb wins

Solo with a carry-on on a weekday evening: tap for Line 4 up to about 11 pm, change at South Keys and Bayview, walk from a Line 1 stop near your hotel. On a Sunday pull that cutoff back to roughly 10 pm, because Line 1 closes at 11 and Bayview is a long way from a hotel bed. Later than that, or landing at 1 a.m.: Route 105, which runs overnight as N105 toward Rideau, or a taxi if the next bus is half an hour away and the wind is sideways. Two or three people with full-size bags: run the meter plus the airport pickup fee against the app quote - the bus still wins on cash, but not on patience. Four adults splitting a car almost always beat four separate transit fares once you count the walks.

Once you’re downtown, you don’t need a rental to see Ottawa - Parliament, ByWard and the canal are walkable from Centretown and the Market. Sort the neighbourhood trade-offs in where to stay in Ottawa before you book the room closest to a Line 1 door. Coming up from Toronto, the Toronto to Ottawa page covers the train and bus into the capital so you aren’t reinventing the last mile twice.

Read also

• City base and museums: Ottawa city guide
• Neighbourhoods for the first night: where to stay in Ottawa
• Arriving overland from Toronto: Toronto to Ottawa
• Picking an eastern Canadian airport: which airport for Canada