The School District of Mystery Lake (SDML) announced over the weekend that it will be offering morning and afternoon bus service for its students beginning Nov. 26.
The buses and drivers will be provided by Maple Bus Lines and the bus will run from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. in the morning and from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon.
The bus will be operating on a modified version of the Eastwood route of the currently dormant City of Thompson transit system starting at Yale Avenue in Eastwood at 7:45 a.m. Monday to Friday mornings. The morning bus will travel south along Princeton Drive stopping at the usual bus stops and around Thompson Drive to R.D. Parker Collegiate with another pickup at Southwood Mall. The route will be repeated until 8:45 a.m.
The route will start again at 3:30 p.m. from the high school with the last run leaving RDPC at 4:30 p.m. Riders can get off at Southwood or the nine regular city transit stops along Princeton Drive, Cambridge Street and Yale Avenue.
No passes or bus fare will be required for students to ride the buses.
“This is an interim service that we will use in the best interest of our students until the City of Thompson has restored the city transit system,” said the SDML in its announcement of the bus service on its website.
Thompson has been without city transit service since Nov. 1 after Greyhound stopped providing operational services. The city is currently considering two proposals received to provide the services Greyhound used to.
“The fiscal challenges that the city will be facing in the coming years means that there’s little room for mistakes in this decision: the previous council spent considerable time trimming the city’s operational spending in 2018, and we do not want to negate those efforts by overlooking key details and making rash decisions,” said Mayor Colleen Smook in a Nov. 21 news release.
