City of Powell River councillors have received a recommendation not to contribute $5,000 to a qathet Regional District (qRD) study into on-demand busing.
At the August 16 committee of the whole meeting, councillors reviewed a report from city chief administrative officer Russell Brewer, which recommended that council decline the request.
Brewer reminded councillors that the city had received correspondence from qRD requesting funding to support a study. He said qRD was requesting a $5,000 contribution for an on-demand study that would serve the rural areas of the regional district. He added that there are four main initiatives of relevance for consideration, including work done by a regional transportation working group, the lower Sunshine Coast transit future action plan, BC Transit digital on-demand initiatives, and the city’s Zunga bus on-demand pilot. A lot of work has been done, he added.
“Given BC Transit’s implementation timeline and current status for digital on-demand, and expected presentation of a service discussion document this fall regarding potential integration options between the city’s conventional transit and Zunga on-demand, BC Transit suggested providing the service discussion document; we are expecting that next month,” said Brewer. “Staff feels that contributing to support studying on-demand in the rural areas of the regional district would be premature or maybe even redundant to the existing initiatives that are underway.
“As much as we’d like to provide some funding to support their work, staff feels a lot of work has been done already and we’ll be better informed once BC Transit carries on with their on-demand initiative.”
Brewer said the $50,000 in grant funding qRD is receiving is not contingent on funding from the city.
Councillor Cindy Elliott asked if saying no to contributing to the qRD study would be perceived as lack of support for on-demand transit from the city. She said her concern is if BC Transit uses this as evidence that the city doesn’t support on-demand transit.
Brewer said he had spoken with BC Transit and its thoughts were similar to the city’s; that it is premature to study it, given the work BC Transit has underway regarding on-demand transit. He said qRD had signed onto the $50,000 grant and had approved up to a $15,000 expenditure for the regional district’s contribution. The regional district had asked Tla’amin Nation and the city to contribute to the $15,000 requirement, and Tla’amin had kicked in $5,000, according to Brewer.
Councillor George Doubt, who sits as a qRD city representative, said he thinks a city contribution would be redundant and the study is going to go ahead, regardless of whether the city contributes.
Committee chair councillor CaroleAnn Leishman asked for unanimous consent to send the matter to city council and said she trusts that the city will send qRD all of the information it has regarding on-demand transit.
