Public Transit Committee public workshop November 22
By Derek Kilbourn
Monday, November 17 2008
Fay Weller and Judith Roux, members of the Public Transit Committee (PTC), recently presented the results of their survey at the Gabriola Transportation Society’s (GTA) Annual General Meeting.
The PTC is an ad hoc or partnership group, made up of people from several different community organizations, one of those being the GTA.
The survey was sent out to every household on Gabriola and Mudge Islands. It was available online and in paper form and the committee asked that one survey be returned for each household. They received 399 replies representing 797 people from 2,100 households - a 20 percent return. According to Fay, that meant an average of two persons per household -- which is the average number of people per household on Gabriola.
“When we started this, we were told 200 replies would give us a statistical validity between plus or minus five percent,” said Fay.
One of the first things the PTC did was create a map to get a sense of where people are living on the island.
A side result of creating the map, which included colour-coded flags for size of households, was confirming there are not a lot of four or more person households on the island.
In clarifying the question of “how often would you use the system” Fay pointed out, “A lot of people might say of course I’ll use it, and then won’t. So this is about people’s highest aspirations. It needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but right now this is what people feel.”
Fay also went into the next steps on what would be happening with transit.
The first step is a public presentation of the results and a workshop on public transit - to be held on November 22 at the Commons from 10 am until 2 pm.
Also, the PTC is planning to meet with other transportation organizations, like the taxi, and bicycle group to look at whether a hybrid model involving vans, buses, and taxis might be better than a pure bus system; or whether coordinating a bus system with other modes of travel such as biking and walking might be the way to go.
“We’re still talking about biofuel and Judy has done more analysing of that. We’re going to do an economic study around the feasibility. We’ve been having conversations with B.C. Transit and the RDN. Those discussions will continue and will obviously depend on who is elected.
“If we do get to be part of the B.C. Transit system they provide 50 percent subsidization, but that’s probably two or three years down the line. What we do need right now is someone who is supportive and willing to move ahead within the RDN.”
Jim Ramsay, chair of the GTS, said, “I wanted to briefly mention the Salt Spring Island situation, I travelled down there to ride on their new bus. They have five routes but they’re in a different situation than we are with three ferry terminals and double the population.
“Nevertheless, it was a very impressive operation. It’s a 20-person style bus, with lift-assist and bicycle racks. Other than at the major destinations, there were no bus stops; people just flagged the bus down and the driver stopped and picked them up.
“It showed what could happen if we ended up with something like the Salt Spring model at the end of this.”
Jim added the charge was $2 a ride, with monthly passes also available.
“From what I understand, ridership is exceeding expectations by quite a bit.”
Just after Fay and Judith’s presentation to the GTS, the Times Colonist confirmed this with a report stating the initial expectation of 20,000 riders per year on Salt Spring had been passed and that close to 50,000 people had ridden the system in its first 10 months.
Fay and Judith were asked if they were able to come up with an expected value of ridership in order to estimate the potential revenue of a Gabriola bus system.
Fay explained that based on 50 percent of the people who said they would ride every day for the survey, “We came up with $142,875 in revenue on an annual basis -- a fairly decent number. That’s if we charge $2 per ride.”
“We also tried to use the commuter numbers. Even if only 20 percent of them used the system and paid $2, that would come to $96,530. Combine that with daytime users, say in one day a total of 25 people, at $2 a person, that’s around $36,000. Add those two numbers together and the total is $132,530. These are just preliminary numbers of course, but it was one way of looking at the potential.”
One number that the GTS and PTC are hoping to have for the public meeting is what kind of budget the Salt Spring and Bowen Island bus systems work on.
Judith pointed out there will be other uses for the survey too, thanks to more information that came in. “The high percentage of people who are biking, for example. That’s a statistic we can use to apply to the provincial government for infrastructure for biking since they recently announced that would be a program they’ll be launching. We’ll also be able to use this survey for things other than just studying public transit on the island.”
Asked if there was a difference in the survey answers for usage in the winter versus summer, Fay said there was a mix of answers, with some people thinking they would use it more in the winter because of weather, and others saying there would be more usage in the summer with many of the visitors to the island using the bus.
At the November 22 workshop, after a brief presentation of survey results and background information, discussion groups will focus on subjects such as scheduling, routes, transit models, governance and management. Time will be given to reporting back and sharing summary thoughts.
The workshop is free, but the public is asked to register with the PTC by November 20 so the event can be organized according to numbers. You may order lunch when you preregister or bring a brown bag lunch with you. Contact Deb at debscott1@shaw.ca or 247-8185 to register.
The entire survey results are available for viewing at the Gabriola Library.
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