Nearly a year after previous transit service supplier Greyhound Canada shut down its Western Canada operations and left the City of Thompson without local bus service, the ad-hoc transit committee has accepted a proposal from city administration for a new transit system in the community.
The new system will see one main route operating through the city from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on weekdays with an express route during peak hours in the morning and afternoon focusing on student transportation. When the express bus isn’t running that route, it will provide on-call hand-transit services, the city said in an Oct. 23 press release. There were will be no weekend service and the buses used will be smaller than full-sized coaches, similar to the City of Calgary’s Crestline fleet.
The new transit system is expected to cost about $212,000 annually and will provide improved information to users via GPS locators on buses and improved customer service for callers seeking route information. The committee continues to discuss fare pricing in the immediate and long term, the city said, as well as handi-transit and other options for improving transit serivce.
“This new plan has been a long time coming and we apologize wholeheartedly for the interruptions in transit service over the last 12 months,” said Mayor Colleeen Smook in the press release. “Transit is an essential service for any city, and we quite literally could not afford to get this one wrong.”
It has been nearly four months since there was last city transit service in Thompson. An indefinite transit suspension billed as a “hiatus through the months of July and August” when it was announced by the city back in June has now stretched nearly into November and likely will, given that the city has to put out a tender before selecting a new transit provider.
Since the Public Schools Act requires that students who have to walk more than 1.6 kilometres to school have access to transportation, the School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) began funding a student bus service at the end of September. SDML trustees awarded the contract to Maple Bus Lines for a set daily rate at their Sept. 24 meeeting. Service began Sept. 30 and will run until June 30, though the district can end the contract earlier if city transit resumes before then, said SDML secretary-treasurer Kelly Knott.
The bus service, available only to SDML students, operates two routes every weekday morning, lunch hour and afternoon. One route goes from Eastwood to R.D. Parker Collegiate with 12 stops, while the other goes from Burntwood to RDPC with 15 stops. Service begins on both routes at 7:45 a.m. beginning at Yale on one route and Giant Tiger on the other. The last morning pickup on both routes is at 8:45 a.m. Buses begin lunch hour pickups at RDPC at 12:25 p.m., operating in reverse order on both routes, then resume the regular routes at 12:50 p.m. heading back toward RDPC. Afternoon service on both routes begins at 3:15 p.m. at RDPC, with the last pickup from RDPC at 4:15 p.m. Afternoon buses run in reverse order from the morning routes.
The SDML board of trustees approved taking $35,000 from the district’s excess operating surplus to fund the student bus service for the current school year at their Oct. 22 meeting.
The current suspension follows four-and-a-half months of public transit service provided by Maple Bus Lines from the middle of February to the end of June, which was preceded by a three-and-a-half month suspension of service that started Nov. 1 of last year.
Maple Bus Lines received $181,896.22 in payments from the city from February to June.
SDML paid $7,839 to the city for bus fares on behalf of students who took the bus without paying in February and March. That works out to about 5,200 round trips at a cost of $1.50 each way.
