New wheelchair-accessible bus shelters are just one of several upgrade projects aimed at improving Metrobus ridership in St. John’s.
The federal government and the City of St. John’s are kicking in a total of $761,000 towards four projects to improve public transit in the St. John’s area.
One of the projects will see 31 wheelchair-accessible shelters installed in the coming months.
Council finance committee lead Dave Lane says making Metrobus more accessible is part of a broader plan by St. John’s city council to boost ridership.
“On routes one, two, and three, we’ve been putting a heavy effort on bringing those all up to complete accessibility – that also means having the curbs cut properly so people can easily get up,” Lane said Monday as the funding was announced.
“The shelters that you’re used to getting into aren’t wide enough to fit the wheelchair. We’ve started replacing them. We have 60 shelters in total.”
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According to statistics presented by Metrobus, there were more than 2.9 million rides on a Metrobus in 2016. That number is down slightly from 2015, where just over 3 million rides were taken. There’s no data for 2017 available just yet.
Lane says a higher ridership could help the city access more federal dollars to further improve the Metrobus system.
“The transportation infrastructure program that the federal government has is actually pegged at the number of riders that your municipality has,” said Lane.
“What we’re focusing on, while we take advantage of funding that’s available year-to-year, is to find other ways of getting our ridership up.”
Lane says the city is exploring engagement with young people, as well as potentially offering discounted passes to young people or low-income earners.
“If our ridership goes up through that, even if we’re not getting the same fares as a typical rider, we could access more funding to make a better transportation system.”
St. John’s East MP Nick Whalen says more riders means more money under the current funding model, so he’s hopeful Monday’s announcement will help get more butts in seats.
“The design of all the programs is to increase ridership across the country. If St. John’s sees increases in ridership with the rest of the country, then our percentage of funding — which is quite low compared to the national average — will stay the same,” said Whalen.
“In order to get to our desired target of 1.7 per cent of funding — which is our provincial average of population compared to the country — we really have to grow our ridership numbers.”
Whalen says last year, Metrobus received about $5 million in federal dollars for improvements.
In addition to the improved shelters, a tire-balancing machine has been purchased with the funding, which will allow mechanics to balance tires in-house for Metrobus.
Another portion of the funding will go toward the city’s on-going review of Metrobus, while the remaining proceeds will go towards improving the online presence of Metrobus.
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