While Collingwood's transit hours can be extended, longer hours will fuel annual cost increases and council will have to decide whether it will approve the increased spending.
During council’s regular meeting on Monday (Jan. 23), councillors were given stark numbers as to how much it would cost to extend transit hours for both accessible and conventional transit options in Collingwood.
The cost equates to $80,000 a year for every additional hour of transit service, the town’s operations and transit co-ordinator, Kris Wiszniak, told councillors.
During Monday’s meeting, Coun. Brandon Houston put forward a motion to have town staff contact Landmark – the town’s transit service provider – to find out the costs of extending their service to 1 a.m. Currently, both conventional and accessible transit options in Collingwood operate from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“I have had conversations with Landmark about the possibility of extending hours,” said Kris Wiszniak, operations and transit co-ordinator with the Town of Collingwood. “The short answer is, yes it can be done. The longer answer is, at what cost to the taxpayer?”
The request comes on the heels of community members with disabilities calling on council to extend hours since the town moved to their TransitPLUS model in mid-December. Under the previous accessible transit contract with Ace Cabs, accessible service was available 24/7, although rides after 9 p.m. were required to be pre-booked.
Wiszniak noted that if the town were going to extend service hours for accessible transit (TransitPLUS), the conventional service should also be extended to the same hours to ensure equity across the service. The cost of extending hours for both conventional transit and TransitPLUS in Collingwood works out to approximately $80,000 annually per hour of extension.
During his comments on Monday, Wiszniak also provided an update on how the new TransitPLUS service is faring since launching in December.
“It’s doing very, very well,” he said. “Our ridership is extremely high. This is mainly during peak times; between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day.”
Wiszniak said between 6 and 9 p.m., ridership tends to drop off.
“Landmark has seen little to no ridership in these evening hours,” he said, noting that typically towns wouldn’t consider extending transit hours based on those factors. “I would really like to see that ridership improve.”
Other considerations raised by Wiszniak include the costs around keeping transit terminals open later, hiring more staff to drive the shifts, and when vehicle maintenance would be completed if buses were running 18 hours a day.
“There are no funding opportunities available for operational projects,” he said.
During Monday’s meeting, Wiszniak said the town had contacted Ace Cabs regarding future arrangements, and the cab provider said they were no longer interested in providing those services between the hours of 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.
“It’s not the town that has reduced their service level,” he said. “That’s their business decision.”
Wiszniak did note to councillors that the conventional on-demand transit service is slated to be rolled out in March, and at that time there are many options that can be considered to make the service better overall, once the town gets its bearings on running the new service. Some options mentioned by Wiszniak include purchasing back vehicles from Ace Cabs solely to do later runs or having one vehicle that could service both conventional and accessible transit users to be used on a request basis after 9 p.m.
“I would encourage all riders to be registered for the service so when they need it, they can make the call and use the service,” he said.
During council discussion on the matter, Coun. Rob Ring noted that the town seems to have some solutions on the table of which council had not previously been aware.
“I have a hard time supporting a full service with everything, because ridership is down and hearing the cost of a full service – I don’t think we could make that up,” said Ring. “I’ll support this tonight because we’re just asking for a report to come back.”
Coun. Kathy Jeffery pointed out that decisions on transit could have major budget impacts, with the 2023 budget coming before council for possible final ratification next Monday.
She asked for staff to come back with any solutions they could come up with that didn’t have budget impacts, and refer remaining changes to the 2024 budget discussion. She put forward an amendment to the motion to that effect, which passed.
“I just don’t think it’s reasonable at this point to delay the (2023) budget,” she said.
Council voted unanimously in favour of asking town staff to engage in further discussions with Landmark regarding the possibility of extending overall transit hours for both conventional transit and TransitPLUS.
