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By Shaun Penner

Transit On-Demand

City of Grande Prairie working towards on-demand transit model

Aug 19, 2020 | 1:08 PM

Transit riders in Grande Prairie may soon have more flexibility in picking their ride times on certain routes, as City staff continue work on an on-demand transit model.

Discussion about such a model was held at the Community Services Committee meeting on Tuesday, after the topic was brought forward by Councillor Dylan Bressey.

Bressey told committee he has seen on-demand models work in municipalities in Alberta and across Canada and would like to see a model like it here in the Swan City.

“Not to replace our system probably, but to help us service the neighbourhoods or the times where there is low ridership,” Bressey told committee.

“There may not be a lot of riders that need to get around [on those routes], but to those individual riders, transit is really important.”

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Transit Manager for the City of Grande Prairie Steve Harvard says the City has been offering a “hybrid” model of on-demand transit since March because of COVID-19, where riders can book a ride within the last hour of service during the week, and the last two hours on Saturdays. Harvard said that service has seen low ridership.

However, he says his department has been working “very feverishly” to get a pilot program for on-demand transit rolled out on a full-time basis, through the same app that is being used for the City’s accessible transit users.

Harvard says this model of transit would allow riders to book the times that are convenient to them, which would then be pooled to create bus routes that better meet demand and better utilize City buses.

“Rather than the traditional ‘let’s have 40 foot buses running around the city 18 hours a day’, with some of them being full and some of them being not so full, why don’t we try to look at what our actual demand is and then supply the services that are required? During those specific time periods.”

He says his department is planning to take a three-stage approach going forward with its transit model, with popular routes running as normal, going down to on-demand service for lightly used routes.

“What will eventually happen is we will have 40-foot buses out there when we do have that demand, absolutely.

“But, as demand starts to dwindle, we will be moving to smaller buses,” said Harvard. “Then the third layer of our plans is to have the on-demand service, which will be when the demand is very light.”

He adds that on-demand service could be expanded to parts of Grande Prairie that currently do not have a route running through them.

“So, areas that we don’t currently serve because, really, there has been no demand or no requests for service, we will put into a geographic area and just advertise and let people know you do have the ability to call and get a ride.”

Harvard says they hope to roll out the pilot program at the beginning of October.