By Sheena Roszell

transit

Changes and upgrades coming for city’s bus routes

Jun 21, 2019 | 6:09 AM

The city’s transit service hasn’t been looked at in a number of years and they’re wanting to put a plan in place that matches the ridership demand with the service that’s provided.

This August, the city will be making some changes to transit bus Routes 5, 6 and 7.

Routes 5 and 6 will be reduced to hourly throughout the day and Route 7 is returning to a school route.

Steve Harvard, the city’s Manager of Transit Services, says they will be putting notices up on all impacted routes so that everybody has a good amount of time to understand when the changes are coming and how they are going to be impacted.

Once phase one is implemented and analyzed, they’ll look at making more changes.

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“It’s important to keep up with the growth of the city and its areas and we have had a number of requests for service in certain areas that we currently don’t serve, so we are going to be looking at how we can better utilize current service and expand into those areas,” he explained.

According to Harvard, ridership is steady and growing slowly, and a lot of that is linked to the economic activity within the city. Overall ridership this year is up about 4.1% over last year, year to date.

He says in the future they will also be looking at utilizing smaller buses on certain routes at certain times of the day.

“A lot of communities are going towards this, rather than having a huge 40-foot bus running around with not too many people on board.”

Phase 1 with changes to Routes 5, 6 and 7 rolls out August 19:

Route 5

• Service frequency is being reduced to hourly throughout the day
• The last trip will leave the Prairie Mall at 7:35 p.m. Monday to Wednesday and Saturday and 8:35 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.
• No changes to Sunday service

Route 6

• Service frequency is being reduced to hourly throughout the day
• The last trip will leave the Eastlink Centre at: 7:59 p.m. Monday to Wednesday and Saturday and 8:59 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.
• No changes to Sunday Service

Route 7

• This route is returning to a school route, with one morning trip and one afternoon trip on school days only
• The morning trip operates between 7:09 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
• The afternoon trip operates between 2:59 p.m. and 4:59 p.m.