When Ana Santos arrived at the District of Squamish-B.C. Transit workshop last week, she was excited about the potential outcome of the meeting. In no way did she expect the local service reductions recommended by B.C. Transit officials.
She left the four-hour meeting on June 26 disheartened and wondering whether she and other members of the Squamish Climate Action Network (CAN) transit group had been wasting their time for the past two years.
"I arrived very enthusiastic, thinking, 'Great, this is a great step forward, what we hear today will allow us to move on,'" she said this week. "I left very sad and disappointed that this is all they could come up with.
"It just seems we're going to get the opposite of precisely everything that people want."
Some council members also expressed dismay at the suggested changes put forward by Graeme Masterton, B.C. Transit's operational planning director.
"I didn't think we'd be looking at reducing the service," said Coun. Patricia Heintzman. "I've had the impression from everyone they feel the service levels are already inadequate."
The local transit service has three routes that run six days per week from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. with extended Friday hours (10 p.m. departure from downtown). Riders can wait between 35 minutes and one hour and 50 minutes for the next bus, depending on the time of day. There is no bus service on Sundays.
Masterton presented a slideshow illustrating the current ridership numbers and proposed changes to the routing and the hours. He said B.C. Transit officials concluded that service levels to Valleycliffe are too high and that the service day is too long for the ridership.
He suggested reducing general hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and reducing Friday night service to 9 p.m. at the latest.
That surprised some councillors, especially considering that Masterton said at the beginning of his presentation "ridership locally responds to improvements in the service - every time you see improvement in the service, the demand catches up."
"You've told us that ridership responds to improvements in service, but yet you're suggesting cutting services?" asked Coun. Rob Kirkham.
Masterton said it comes down to the bottom line.
"It doesn't make sense from a business perspective to run buses if no one is riding them," he said.
He also explained that cutting hours and investing the same amount of money could potentially result in more frequent trips. He also suggested shortening some of the routes.
Areas that would not longer have close access to bus service included Northridge in Valleycliffe, Government Road north of Eagle Run in Brackendale and Glacier View in Garibaldi Highlands. He also proposed limited service to the Don Ross Secondary and Brackendale Elementary area, and Quest University.
"Quest has the potential to be a large ridership, but not at the moment," said Masterton, who was unaware that Quest students had approached council several weeks ago requesting a U-Pass system and more frequent service to the university.
Coun. Bryan Raiser questioned the intelligence behind not serving the Glacier View area, considering the steepness of the slope going up Thunderbird Ridge Drive.
Masterton said the Glacier View area is an expensive neighbourhood in which most homes have two or three vehicles parked and available, so residents likely wouldn't use public transit anyway.
That was one of several comments that frustrated Santos, who felt there was no actual community input considered in the suggested changes.
"I heard a lot of guesswork in terms of, 'We're going to cut this route here because the houses look very big and we don't think people in that neighbourhood use them,'" she said.
"I wouldn't expect that people that are managing this service would be making assumptions like that."
She suggested actually interviewing the people who live in the Glacier View area.
"Who knows?" she said. "They may have lots of nannies there who use the buses to take the kids around. Why make the connection that the houses are big, therefore no bus is needed?"
Masterton admitted there had been no community input, only operator-based counts on all routes, historical comparisons and a review with the operating company. He said with council's permission, B.C. Transit would take the proposed changes to the public in the fall.
Santos said she thought it should be done sooner.
"I wasn't happy at all with what I saw and heard. I was disappointed that I didn't hear much in terms of work on the ground, asking people questions to find out what's needed," she said.
"Squamish CAN has spent the last two years, every month, interviewing people and taking them on the bus so we have collected a lot of information but we haven't been asked for it.
"That is not necessarily a problem if they don't think that our information is not serious enough in terms of data, but I would have expected that if they're coming with recommendations about reducing services and cutting routes, they would have asked those questions themselves."
She said counting the number of passengers on the bus "doesn't tell us anything new. It tells us what we already know -that there are very few people on the buses."
Santos said the question should be why people are or they aren't taking the bus.
One suggestion most councillors liked was to have a "spine" route going between downtown and Garibaldi Village, where 51 per cent of all boardings and 52 per cent of all alightings (getting off the bus) take place, and feeder routes for the different neighbourhoods.
Option 2 included limited service to Valleycliffe and Brackendale and one route from downtown to the Highlands. Option 3 included limited service to Valleycliffe, no service to the Highlands and one route from downtown to Brackendale and Option 4 included limited service to Brackendale, no service to the Highlands and one route from Garibaldi Village via downtown to Valleycliffe.
Masterton said B.C. Transit could come back to council with menu of service options including prices, and show the options to the public after the summer break when some people were out of town.
