A motion for a city-led in-depth study into transit in City of Powell River was defeated.
At the May 14 committee of the whole meeting, councillors considered a motion for staff to bring a report back to council analyzing possible traditional transit schedule adjustments, as well as improvements to Zunga Bus operations, including changes to hours of operation, fares and cost of expansion, to present to BC Transit to better serve the community and transit drivers.
Councillor George Doubt said before the motion was discussed, he wanted to move that council be authorized to discuss the happenings at the closed council meeting with BC Transit on April 30. He said he did not believe the committee could discuss the original motion with any kind of sense unless councillors could talk about what came out of the closed meeting.
“There’s a lot of information there that affects transit and the Zunga Bus and future costs,” said Doubt. “If the motion passes, we could discuss publicly what we heard in that meeting.”
Doubt’s motion carried.
Councillor and committee chair Earl Almeida then brought forward the motion for the report. He said he had brought forward notice of the motion in March, but dealing with it was postponed until after the closed meeting with BC Transit.
“BC Transit, along with any large organization, is like a tanker ship trying to turn in the water,” said Almeida. “They can’t turn and pivot as quickly as we can in our little powerboat. We can adjust a little more according to our small-town needs and that was the original essence of the motion.
“While I had originally started the motion two months ago based on Zunga Bus, since that time I’ve also had community members and bus drivers talk to me about the inconveniences of our current schedule and its limitations.”
After consulting with staff, Almeida said he wanted to focus on a bigger picture.
“The end result that came out of our April 30 meeting was that we cannot expect much to change in terms of transit from BC Transit within the next couple of years,” he added. “The gist of it is the earliest we can probably expect any sort of change, if we’re lucky, is 2026. My feeling is we can probably impact some change; we can probably make some shifts to our schedules. My hope is not to spend more money.”
Councillor Trina Isakson said BC Transit was planning for a large-scale service review, which hasn’t been done since 2015 or 2016, and there will be great learning that comes out of that.
“The results of that will likely not be implemented until 2026,” said Isakson. “What I see as the value in this motion is: what are the small changes we could make, given existing constraints, to make sure our transit is best serving the community and the drivers.”
Isakson made an amendment to the original motion to include handyDART schedule adjustments. The amendment carried.
Mayor Ron Woznow asked staff to indicate how much time it would take to implement the motion and offer a best guess at what projects would have to be dropped.
Chief administrative officer Lisa Bhopalsingh said the transit report would impact other projects. Director of infrastructure Tor Birtig said a full-service review by BC Transit is anticipated. He said small tweaks to existing service impact the overall system dramatically.
“Within our transit staff we do not have the expertise to refine that without the assistance of BC Transit,” said Birtig. “BC Transit is doing the full review commencing this spring or summer, which would incorporate existing users, but also other potential users that the system is not capturing, and look at the overall system.
“As far as the amount of time that this would take, we would definitely have to drop something if we were doing it with our inside staff.”
Bhopalsingh said one option that council could consider is a consultant, but it would have to be checked with BC Transit to see if they would support the recommendation.
Isakson’s amendment passed to include handyDART.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said the meeting with BC Transit was good, with an indication that ridership had returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, and was at its best in April. She said the intention of BC Transit’s full-service review is to come out with answers to including on-demand transit in Powell River by that time. She added that Powell River is one of 10 communities that BC Transit wants to upgrade buses in. She said she did not see the staff report as a good use of staff time.
The committee voted down the amended motion for the staff report, which called for analyzing possible transit schedule adjustments, as well as improvements to Zunga Bus and handyDART operations. There were three council members in favour and four opposed.
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