At a council meeting March 19, city council passed a resolution to purchase two new handicap accessible buses this year for $845,136 from New Flyer Industries.
Now that the city has approved the purchase of the vehicles, two D35LFR vehicles, council must still decide whether the two new buses will continue to fall under the maintenance system of the other buses in the city and be contracted out or not.
Timothy Stokes, a spokesperson for Greyhound Canada, says he can't state whether or not Greyhound Canada would make a bid to run the service again should the city choose to go the route of contracting, but says the company is in close talks with the City of Thompson regarding the community's transit needs.
The city has subcontracted out the delivery of local intra-city bus service to Grey Goose Bus Lines since the transit system started out in Thompson in the early 1970s, with Grey Goose of Winnipeg being purchased by Greyhound Canada in 1998. The city's current four-year contract with Grey Goose expires on July 31 - a contract based on paying the carrier a subsidy to offer the service. The subsidy itself is based on a fixed rate of 5,500 hours of annual service, with the hourly rate increased to $51.46 in July 2007 from $50.21. Grey Goose keeps all fare revenue under the current deal.
The City of Thompson will be paying for the buses with the Gas Tax revenue, which is specifically allocated for transit, with $128,000 a year, which is in place until 2015 in the City of Thompson.
There is still much to be discussed with regards to how to run the bus system in Thompson.
A recent survey conducted by Thompson's Acts to Cut Emissions (ACE) group, hosted on the Community Led Emissions Reduction (CLER) group's webpage section on thompson.ca, showed that buses in Thompson see their heaviest uses at R. D. Parker Collegiate before school and after, with most passengers coming from the east side of the city. The survey also showed that people who did not use the bus service do not do so because they expressed that they could get to where they were going faster by walking or that there is no bus service when they need it.
Andrea Hatley, CLER co-ordinator for the City of Thompson, says the majority of respondents to the survey stated they rarely used the transit system, while over a third of respondents didn't even know Thompson had a transit system in place.
The next steps for the City of Thompson include meeting with R. D. Parker, businesses and community members to hear their input on a new bus system and to hold public meetings to discuss proposed routes and other topics.
