Transit bus riders may have to look for alternative transportation options come Nov. 1 unless the outgoing council holds a special meeting to consider proposals from bus operators to provide drivers for Thompson city buses.
A city request for proposals (RFP) required interested operators to submit their proposals by Oct. 17.
“The City of Thompson received several responses to our transit services RFP,” said city manager Anthony McInnis Oct. 18. “Administration is analyzing the tenders and preparing information and recommendations for the transit ad hoc committee. Should the current council want to bring the tenders forward during the current term, a special meeting of council will be called early next week, and there will likely not be an interruption in service. Otherwise the tenders will be brought forward for review by the next council in November, in which case an interruption in transit service may occur.”
Greyhound Canada informed the city July 18 that it will no longer be providing drivers, storage and maintenance services for Thompson’s transit buses effective Oct. 31, the same day it runs its Western Canadian inter-city bus routes for the last time.
Under the terms of that contract, which was on a month-to-month basis since a previous five-year agreement expired at the end of 2015, Greyhound provided bus drivers, storage facilities and maintenance on the two city-owned buses for a monthly fee, and provided replacement buses when the city’s were not usable at a cost of $800 per bus per day.
In 2017, the city paid Greyhound $424,192.12 for its services and collected $95,842.20 in bus fares from roughly 53,000 riders, mostly during the school year. That means the cost to the city of operating the transit system was approximately $328,000, more than during the five-year agreement from 2011 through 2015, when the average annual cost was about $273,000.
The ad hoc committee, which includes councillors Duncan Wong, Ron Matechuk, Penny Byer, Judy Kolada and Blake Ellis, as well as city administration staff and community representatives from the infrastructure/public works and finance/administration committees, consulted Thompson Bus, Kasper Transportation, Maple Bus Lines and Beaver Bus Lines before issuing the RFP.
“We only talked with them to get information to find out if there would be any limitations, depending on what we wanted to do for a service,” Byer told the Thompson Citizen in September. “And what we found out from talking with those companies is that anything that we discussed as a possible service or alternative is feasible with any of these companies.”
