Let’s all hope Kamloops Coun. Donovan Cavers is successful on Friday when he meets with fellow Kamloopsian Todd Stone, the province’s transportation minister who ostensibly controls the bus service in the city.
And, let’s also hope that if the minister of transportation shuts down Cavers’ entreaty to do something with what is, at best, deplorable service, the two of them work to find a way to do better with what we have.
Despite what some claim, people really do use the city’s transit service — people who have to go to work, even on Sundays, and at hours that don’t fit into the current schedule.
Take Good Friday, for example.
Anyone who had to work that day and didn’t have their own transportation was pretty much hooped — those who do the scheduling had the statutory holiday off, so everyone else must have, too.
There are plenty of young people in our community whose job opportunities are limited because they’re working in the service industry, where the pay is too low to afford a car for many of them, and the hours start earlier than the first bus or go later than the last one.
So, when a BC Transit employee walks into a city council meeting, as happened late last month, and tells Cavers and his colleagues the city isn’t getting a promised expansion of services this year, next year or the year after, well, let’s just tuck that away to ask Stone, his cabinet colleague Terry Lake and anyone else who steps up to run in the 2017 provincial election.
To hear Stone assert B.C. is No. 1 in supplying transit in the country — on a per capita basis — is misleading because the bulk of that per capita isn’t up here in the Interior or in the northern stretches of the province, but in the Lower Mainland.
But, wait, maybe it’s not reneging on a promise, Stone told KTW after the BC Transit visit to council.
Maybe it just won’t be the extra 8,500 hours the city was expecting — 6,000 to regular service and 2,500 to HandyDart.
It’s mind-boggling to think a cabinet minister would undercut one of his portfolios in public, but equally confusing that the transit people would say something the minister didn’t vet and give his stamp of approval.
But, it’s also an opening Cavers can perhaps work with when he talks with Stone.
Here are some suggestions:
• Quit catering to Thompson Rivers University.
Try remembering there are taxpayers who live out in Rayleigh and in the Versatile area and in Dallas, among others, who might like to see a bus more than every hour or more — as in the case of the No. 13 up the Yellowhead.
• Consider shorter repeater routes.
Why have the Dallas bus, for example, go all the way down to the Lansdowne stop?
Why not build a system of overlapping loops — a network, for lack of a better description — that can be used to move people faster?
• How about some park-and-ride stops?
Those are just some ideas and it’s likely Cavers — long a proponent for more efficient ways to travel — has many of his own.
Let’s just hope he and Stone have the kind of discussion the minister obviously didn’t have with his own transit staff.
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
Twitter: @mdalebass
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