City aims to attract more bus riders

“People can try it out for the first time or the second time, because they haven’t tried it for a long time, just see how it works, see how it can work for them,” she said.

Free transit day has been a regular event in P.A. for over 10 years on clean air day. This year there will be food trucks set up at the transfer station on 14th Street behind the fire hall. Besides the chance to grab lunch, people who come down to the transfer station will have the chance to speak with transit officials and provide feedback.

Promoting more people to use the city’s bus service can be beneficial to the environment, also the more people who make use of the system the less of a subsidy is needed to keep it going.

“We like to make sure that we’ve got our buses running as efficiently as possible,” said Sapsford.

Over the years Sapsford said they have been making changes to try to make the system better. This includes getting new buses as well as implementing a GPS tracking system on buses which will allow people to track their bus in real time.

According to Sapsford, the number of people taking the buses has gone up since 2009. Generally the ridership has gone up between five and 10 per cent every year.

“We’ve been continuously improving and we hope that’s because we’re improving the bus system,” she said.

Ward two councillor Terra Lennox-Zepp said she is happy about the implementation of the GPS system on the city’s buses as people will have more information about where their bus is, while also helping to collect data, such as how many people are getting on at certain stops at during what time of day.

“That’s going to be able to help us improve our bus routing services,” she said.

Going forward Lennox-Zepp said transport is important, especially with the new University of Saskatchewan campus coming in 2020.

“Many students don’t have vehicles and they want a bus service that is efficient, also that’s clean and reliable and safe,” she said.

Lennox-Zepp said she has heard from students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic and other residents who are disappointed the pilot project which saw bus service run into the evening hours for one year not continue.

“It was quite successful while we we’re operating the evening late night service,” she said.

The ward two councillor said with the bus service not being available in the evening hours students enrolled at Saskatchewan Polytechnic have told her they have turned down working late night shifts.

“That’s a way that we can really improve the economic stability of a city, is to be able to have people in a position where they feel like they can work in the evening and safely get home,” she said.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On twitter: @mjhskcdn

by Michael Joel-Hansen

City aims to attract more bus riders

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