THUNDER BAY — Thunder Bay Transit has postponed until early December the presentation of a report to city council on the realignment of bus routes and schedules.
Transit began its Route Optimization Project in 2017 with the aim of developing cost-neutral improvements that would provide faster and more efficient travel for its riders.
A package of options unveiled at the beginning of this year included increased frequency for some routes, reduced frequency for other routes, and replacing the Neebing and Mission routes with an on-demand service.
The transit department expected that, after stakeholder consultation, it would be ready to submit final recommendations to council this summer.
That plan changed, however, when concerns were raised during the consultation process.
"We've been working on some adjustments, we've been working with Stantec [consultants] on trying to really come up with a plan that's gonna do what it was intended to do, which is to meet everyone's needs...within an approved budget," Transit Manager Brad Loroff said Wednesday in an interview.
Loroff described most of the changes to the draft proposal as "tweaks."
He said "some of the route change ideas gave us cause to go back to the drawing board," and identified impacts on service to the Castlegreen area as one issue that residents in that neighbourhood had raised as significant to them.
When the completed report is made public, Loroff said, he expects "people will be pretty pleased with what they see. It'll certainly be a reflection of what came through with the consultation."
The route optimization project is not tied directly to last week's announcement that the Ontario government has nominated 13 Thunder Bay Transit capital projects to the federal government for funding under the Canada Infrastructure Program.
"Route optimization focuses on operating expenditures...totally separate from the capital infrastructure announcements [but] the capital improvements, if approved, will complement operating pretty well," Loroff said.
Thunder Bay Transit last spring submitted a list of capital items which the province reviewed before recently submitting recommendations to Ottawa along with transit funding proposals from communities around Ontario.
The $10 million worth of local projects now being reviewed by the federal government include funding for a new transfer hub, new buses, bus shelters and driver shields to protect transit operators from violent passengers.
Last year was the busiest year in the history of the city's transit system, as it provided more than four million rides, an increase of seven per cent from the previous year.
