Despite low ridership, there was opposition at Monday's community services committee meeting to dropping a new Sudbury Transit route in Chelmsford.
For the last year on a trial basis, a route has services St. Gabriel's Villa in Chelmsford, which had been the only long-term care home in the city without a transit route.
But ridership figures from Sudbury Transit show that the route has so fair failed to catch on. The highest number of riders in a month since the route began operating in June 2015 was 12, which took place in May of this year.
The only other month with double-digit ridership was in March of this year, when 11 people boarded the bus at that stop. In November 2015, just two riders boarded the bus at the St. Gabriel's stop in the entire month.
In total, it cost the transit $18,837 to service a total of 88 riders who boarded in the last 12 months from the home, a cost recovery ratio of 0.7 per cent. That falls well short of the 25 per cent ratio transit aims to meet.
While use of regular transit is low, staff told the committee on Monday that Handi-Transit use is high at the home. Switching users to TransCab would be more cost-effective.
“There's a lot of use, but the majority of users are handi transit users,” said Ron Henderson, the city's GM of assets, citizen and leisure services.
But Ward 4 Coun. Evelyn Dutrisac wanted to know why St. Gabe's was being cut, when councillors didn't have information on ridership on transit routes to other long-term care homes.
“If we're looking at changing one, why aren't we looking at all the others?” Dutrisac said. “I'd like to know how many people are using it.”
And Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier, whose ward includes St. Gabe's, was clearly angry about the proposed cut.
“I'd rather not comment on a report that says cancelled bus route,” Montpellier said.
Instead, he wanted to look at other options, such as the one proposed by Ward 6 Coun. René Lapierre. He suggested that more people would switch to regular transit from Handi-Transit if they knew it was a viable option.
“Maybe what we could do is target in the next couple of months is some training on regular transit usage,” Lapierre said. “Then we could keep the pilot project going for six months after the training.”
But Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer said the purpose of the pilot project was to guage demand for the route, and the results haven't been encouraging.
“We haven't come anywhere close to the ridership targets,” Sizer said. “We wanted to see the stats. The stats aren't favourable.”
Ward 5 Coun Bob Kirwan said the money the route is costing the city is worth it.
“We're looking at spending $400,000 to put dogs in a building,” Kirwan said. “And we're talking about $19,000? … Somebody figure out how we can continue this past September, because it's not that costly.”
“We're not inconveniencing anyone,” Sizer responded, pointing to the stats that showed just four people boarded that route in September 2015. “The stats don't provide us any reason to continue this any more than they have done … We're not rescinding service. TransCab is there.”
“I would rather we wait and get a report,” Dutrisac said, adding that people are using the rout to visit their “dying” relatives.
In the end, councillors voted to keep the route running past September, and to add making the route permanent as a budget option for 2017.
