City of Powell River councillors heard a presentation advocating for the continuation of the Zunga Bus service.
At the November 30 committee of the whole meeting, Rachel Driedger, co-chair of the Powell River Youth Community Action Team, said the Zunga Bus can and does improve public transportation and socioeconomic outcomes for youth in the qathet region.
“These benefits extend to all existing users of the service, and if service is extended, to new users,” said Driedger. “Public transportation has a user group made up of residents and visitors unable to afford costs of private vehicles, or without access to private vehicles, those unable to operate private vehicles or with mobility issues, as well as those concerned with their personal carbon footprint and seeking alternatives to private transportation.
“The Zunga Bus has proven to be a useful model for Powell River and has shown potential for improving mobility to the qathet region.”
Driedger said she wanted to poll council members on how many took public transit to work that day, or within the last month. She asked for a show of hands. No councillors had used public transit.
Cate Miner, co-chair of the youth action team, said the group’s stance on the pilot is that it should be extended.
“Having an on-demand, micro-transit system has been greatly beneficial to the Westview area,” said Miner. “It has served the community well during its pilot. Today I’ll be presenting a youth perspective of the Zunga Bus.
“Youth have expressed their appreciation for this service as it is convenient, low cost and an environmentally friendly form of transit. It is more reliable than our current transit system. It is beneficial to people who have a hard time accessing bus stops and it’s appreciated by people who have a hard time calling and asking for rides.”
Miner said the bus is used to get to and from appointments, work, extracurricular activities, and it relieves household members of time and financial burden of transporting their family members.
“In addition to that, it’s really hard to plan trips around the BC Transit schedule,” said Miner. “We are asking for a service range extension as some people live in Cranberry, Townsite and Wildwood and cannot always access the service. Should the service be extended to a larger area, ridership would go up and many more people would benefit from this service.
“In addition to adding range, extending hours would be beneficial to safely transport youth after extracurricular activities and visits with friends. Many youth miss out on opportunities because they cannot access safe transportation after 6:30 pm and feel uncomfortable taking BC Transit.”
Miner said she has mobility issues that make it more difficult for her to walk more than five minutes when she’s having a flare up. On those days she uses the Zunga Bus to get to and from work and to do her grocery shopping. She said recently, she had an appointment at the hospital and had planned to take BC Transit’s regular bus to get there, and the bus was late. She said had she not been able to call the Zunga Bus, she would have missed her appointment.
“I can’t always rely on BC Transit because their service is inconsistent and they are often late,” said Miner. “I have been relying a lot more heavily on Zunga Bus. There is a clear demand for this service and in its short life it has already impacted so many people. Getting rid of this service would be harmful to the community.”
Community action team coordinator Kathryn Colby said they would like to contribute the $53,000 given to them through a strengthening communities grant in order to extend the Zunga pilot, if possible.
Councillor asks about extended pilot
Councillor Cindy Elliott said council approved money to extend the pilot to regions outside of Westview and she was wondering if that has happened.
Chief administrative officer Russell Brewer said the city has been challenged getting the second bus going because there is a severe shortage of bus drivers, so it hasn’t been able to launch the second bus.
Councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said she is hopeful that with completion of the pilot program, staff can come back to council with recommendations on trying to implement the Zunga Bus into the transit service to make it more efficient and user-friendly for the people who really need it. She said councillors will be hearing from staff in the near future on how the pilot project went, even though the second bus was not able to operate.
Leishman said she hopes the pilot can be extended while BC Transit has an opportunity to review the data and potentially look at including it in the city’s bus service.
Committee chair councillor George Doubt said he voted for the second bus on the promise that it would extend service to Wildwood and extend the hours. He said he has never come to a council meeting using public transit, although he would have liked to do so. He said transit does not work for him in getting from Wildwood to council chambers.
“On-demand transit is a great goal and I think it would be hard to find anyone who disagrees with the concept that it’s a good service,” said Doubt. “Where the rub comes is where we have good services, we have to pay for them. For those who are following the budget process, we’ve looked at the amount of money it’s going to take in taxes to continue the levels of service we have now, much less add any new services.
“We’re actually looking at our January meeting at a reduction of services. The question is: where is the money going to come from?”
