STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.
Photo: Shaun Penner
accessible transit

City says DTS takeover going well

Nov 27, 2019 | 5:30 AM

An update was given Tuesday to the Community Services Committee on the city’s takeover of the disabled transportation.

The City overtook operations from the Disabled Transportation Society on September 1, after two few months of negotiations.

Accessible Transportation is now run under the City’s Transit Operations.

Steve Harvard, Manager of the City’s Transit Services says the change have been going well so far.

“Overall, the transition is going relatively smoothly. There were a lot of different pieces of the puzzle that needed to be worked out, the change from a non-profit to a city run operation, there’s a lot more rigor for a lot of reasons.”

He says the staff have really embraced working with the City.

“Understanding that, you know, there are some procedures that are different that are in place for certain particular reasons, but at the end of the day, we’re all still trying to do the same thing and that is to pick up and transport those who are not able to use the public transit or do not have other methods of transportation.”

Harvard says that there are currently 625 clients in the city, and 53 within the county.

In his report, Harvard says they foresee larger demand being a possible issue in the future, and that they are already seeing higher requests since the takeover.