Half-hour highway bus service on the Coast will remain a dream for at least three more years as BC Transit has ordered a stop to local expansion plans due to a lack of funding by the province.
The original three-year expansion plan on the Coast called for an additional 2,200 hours of service starting in September that would have allowed for half-hour highway service as well as increased coverage along Cowrie Street to Chatelech Secondary School.
BC Transit had devised the plan after much consultation with the public that showed the increased bus service was paramount to improving connections with BC Ferries, which was a concern for most.
Sunshine Coast Transit manager Rob Williams said BC Transit routinely creates three-year expansion plans through memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with local governments, which have in the past been approved by the province.
“For the last six years the province has funded the MOUs and the expansions. I don’t know why they haven’t this year and going forward. It is budget related, but I don’t know why there’s been a change,” Williams said.
In addition to pulling funding for expansions, the province has tasked BC Transit with finding efficiencies within their budgets across all transit systems.
“It’s still vague. We don’t have details, but they’re probably going to want to look at under-performing routes, statutory holidays, should we be running on Christmas, for example. We run on all stats, and we’re unique to that. Not all systems do,” Williams said. “They going to look at our ridership and maybe adjust the service levels on those days accordingly.”
Williams said any changes in service would have to be approved by the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) before implemented locally because the SCRD is a funding partner.
“So they can’t phone SCRD up and say ‘we’re cancelling six trips to Langdale tomorrow.’ There’s a process that has to be followed,” Williams said, noting an overall review of the system will likely be launched “fairly quickly.”
“It needs to be implemented for their next fiscal year, which will be this time next year, April 1, 2016, so we have our rep coming over on Thursday, [March 26] and we’re going to start having some discussion then on what we can look at.”
