By Steve Hubrecht
[email protected]
Local elected officials heard from BC Transit representatives about the possibility of tweaking the current public transportation system in the Columbia Valley at a recent Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) committee meeting.
The transit system is jointly managed by BC Transit and the RDEK, and this past winter, a proposal was put forward to expand the system by adding a weekend service, increasing the number of bus services running north to Edgewater and Radium, and adding a within-Invermere service. That proposal was put on hold, after the RDEK board of directors voted in early April that no further action be taken to obtain participating area approval for the proposal.
“The directors want to examine what options we have within the existing system…The message was that the directors want a better service, giving the public access to affordable housing, education and employment, but that we first need to work with what we have, work within the existing boundaries, to create a better service,” RDEK corporate officer Tina Hlushak had told the Pioneer in early April, after the directors voted to put a hold on the expansion.
Shortly after the vote, BC Transit agreed to meet with the RDEK board during the RDEK’s Thursday, May 12 committee meetings. There, BC Transit representatives Erin Sparks and Seth Wright outlined some options to improve the system’s ridership without going through the full-blown expansion proposal.
“There are a bunch of different options on the table,” said Sparks, specifically mentioning that 730 hours of under utilized on-request service — which is different than regular service, and which they noted has “had a documented lack of ridership for some years” — could instead be reallocated to weekends. They did note, however, that there are limits on what can be done with the existing public transportation system, given its extremely small size.
In terms of daily average use for regular service, Sparks pointed to figures of an average of 10 riders a day on the northern route (which runs from Edgewater through Radium to Invermere), and 14 riders a day on the southern route (which runs from Canal Flats through Fairmont Hot Springs to Invermere).
Sparks and Wright suggested more consultation would be needed.
RDEK Area F Director Susan Clovechok pointed out that much consultation was already conducted, back in 2018, and said “I’m concerned about doing yet another study without first implementing any of the ideas that came out of the 2018 consultation…I’m not sure we’re going to hear anything different from the public than: ‘we want weekends, evening service, and more services on the northern route’, which we already know.”
Sparks replied that BC Transit is thinking of much more targeted engagement, on a smaller scale, dealing specifically with shifting the existing schedule (to allow for later rides, in the evening).
“We are pretty clear. We know that if you’re in the northern part of the valley, you can’t get to work (in Invermere) on time using public transit. We know your kids can’t stay for after-school activities and still get home using public transit,” said Radium Mayor Clara Reinhardt. “If there’s going to be changes…expectations have been raised before, so this time we need to have some hard timelines and some really good data, so we can sell it to our constituents.”
Clovechok asked about the possibility of allowing the local governments of the Columbia Valley to create their own public transit system, using the funding that would have been allocated to B.C. Transit for the Columbia Valley service.
Wright replied that would likely require changing provincial legislation.
“I recognize the frustration you are speaking to…we sometimes haven’t done the best job supporting small (public transit) systems,” conceded Wright, adding the original expansion proposal “might have been a little too much growth all at once. It may be better to take an incremental approach. That may be more palatable.”
