Commuters who ride Ottawa's most popular bus routes during rush hour may have to wait at the bus stop a few more minutes during February and March, OC Transpo says.

Ottawa's public bus company has announced it is temporarily cutting back morning and afternoon peak service on major Transitway high-frequency routes starting Monday, Feb. 18.

That means those buses may be a minute or two behind schedule for six weeks, although things should improve as more and more buses are added throughout the month, OC Transpo head Alain Mercier told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Thursday.

"By the end of March, we'll be back on track," he said.

Revised bus schedules during the service reduction will not be posted at bus stops, but will be available on the OC Transpo website and through its bus stop schedule service at 613-560-1000.

Commuter and rural express routes as well as school routes will not be affected.

The cuts are a result of "recent staffing shortages and unforeseen maintenance and repair work on transit vehicles" a news release said.

Mercier blamed a service increase in the fall, and problems with efforts to accompany that with necessary increases in staffing and garage capacity.

For example, experienced bus operators are being taken off their routes to train 77 new ones, he said.

As a result, "some of our users involved in our school, rural, express services … found that we missed their bus a couple times," he said.

Staffing issues raised in 2002

The city's auditor general, Alain Lalonde, said he was surprised to learn of service cuts being blamed on staffing shortages, as such problems at OC Transpo had been brought up by the auditor general's office as early as 2002 and several times since.

"Certainly, management need to address this issue a bit further because it seems that there's still some work to be done in that area," he said Thursday, adding that should be done as soon as possible.

Lalonde said he hadn't heard until now that there were any problems at OC Transpo with implementing his office's staffing recommendations.

He added that in 2009, his office will review the implementation of all recommendations it has made to the city since 2005.