Brandon Transit use rising

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This article was published 31/12/2019 (2291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon Transit exceeded its target for rides provided in 2019 despite cutting two under-used routes earlier in the year.

As of the end of November, Brandon Transit had provided approximately 30,000 more rides than the target — 1,048,966, compared to a goal of 1,017,000 set by the department, according to the City of Brandon’s corporate scorecard on Monday.

The total-to-date this year is also well over the end-of-year numbers for 2017 and 2018, which were 963,081 and 999,062 rides respectively.

The year is not yet over, so those numbers will likely change.

Carla Richardson, the City of Brandon’s director of transportation, said anecdotally the increase could be because of more students riding the bus, including a bump from increased enrolment at Assiniboine Community College in the past year.

There are also more regular users riding the bus, but when reached on Monday, Richardson said she didn’t know the exact reason behind the increase. She said the increase is an indication the transit system is running efficiently and the routes are meeting needs.

Brandon City Council cut $110,000 from Brandon Transit’s budget during 2019’s city budget deliberations, which resulted in routes 16 (South End Link) and 19 (Mall-Downtown Link) being cancelled. The two routes had the lowest ridership in Brandon Transit. Route 16 averaged 8.7 rides per bus hour between January and September 2018, while route 19 averaged 5.2 riders per bus hour.

Despite this, she said cuts haven’t affected overall ridership.

“I think that we were able to accommodate those riders though the TransCab or they found another route that worked for them,” Richardson said.

“We didn’t specifically lose all of them. I think we did lose some of that ridership, but if there was an impact, I think it was minimal from what we can tell.”

Going forward into deliberations for the city’s 2020 budget, Richardson said she is not expecting any more routes to be cut by Brandon City Council.

Brandon Transit drivers and dispatchers also entered into a new two-year contract agreement with the city in 2019, which sets out one per cent wage increases this year and in 2020. There are also non-monetary adjustments in the contract that make up for the low increases, a union representative told the Sun in November.

Looking forward, Richardson said Brandon Transit expects ridership numbers to stay relatively similar in 2020.

“Based on what happened in 2019, we’re going to have a real good look at what our targets are going be and we have no reason to believe they would be doing down,” Richardson said.

At this point, riders have adjusted to summer 2017 route changes, she said, which also contributed to the increase in rides.

“It’s taken us a long time to recover. People needed time to have a look at the routes and determine what paths work for them, and I think they’ve now settled into their travel habits. … We’re going to just continue with the status quo. I think that will also help us keep our ridership at the same level.” 

» dmay@brandonsun.com

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