By Shaun Penner

Evolving Public Transit

On-demand transit preparations on-going at Grande Prairie City Hall

Oct 29, 2020 | 4:00 PM

City of Grande Prairie administration continues to work on rolling out an on-demand transit option.

Transit Manager Steve Harvard provided an update on the program to members of Council this week. The program was also brought up during a meeting back in August.

Harvard told council members that the on-demand option will add a third layer to the City’s transit service model, with the first layer being to continue with traditional 40-foot buses running on a fixed schedule on heavily utilized routes. The second layer would offer smaller, community shuttle buses on less utilized routes, while finally providing an on-demand option for the least utilized routes and areas.

For Mayor Bill Given, the shifting to such a model is part of the evolution he sees happening with public transit across the province and Canada.

“Particularly in mid-sized communities like Grande Prairie, where we do have a demand for transit, where it plays an important part in a lot of people’s lives, but we don’t necessarily have those really high demand areas where there are thousands of users that need transportation,” said Given.

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“We have areas where there may be hundreds of users who need transportation for peak periods, but many other users in a community like Grande Prairie have a much more distributed sort of pattern of where they are coming from and need to go to.”

Harvard told EverythingGP back in August that they had hoped to have the program running by October, however, he notes in his report to council members that due to issues with the software provider they had been working with, they have been unsuccessful in getting the app launched.

He notes a request for proposal will be issued to find a service provider that will be able to provide an app that can handle both on-demand transit, as well as accessible transit, in early 2021.

For their work to get this rolled out, Given commended City staff for seeing the need to evolve Grande Prairie’s transit service model.

“I’m really pleased that our administration here is really open to these kinds of new ideas and is willing to try and implement them,” said Given. “I think it speaks very highly of the City of Grande Prairie’s staff that they are willing to move forward with this evolution and take advantage of the opportunities that technology is providing today.”