Greater Sudbury is expanding transit service to meet growing demand

The city of Greater Sudbury is increasing transit service over the next two years. The city is addingabout 11,000 hours of transit service. Six-thousandof those will be be on the schedulethis year and the rest will be added in 2025.

These changes include updated arrival times on some routes including Main Line New Sudbury, Laurentian via Regent, Donovan/College Boreal, Garson andConiston. A morning express trip was added to Barry Downe/Cambrian. There will also be more weekend early departures.

Starting August 24, the city is introducing a new route to Valley-Dominion servicing Val Caron/Val Therese and Hanmer via Dominion/Elmview. There is also a new transit schedule for Azilda/Chelmsford andValley.

"Ultimately, [it] responds to ridership demands where we were seeing high volume on specific routes and in some cases, frequency could have been improved," said Brendan Adair, the director of Transit Services at the city.

"We knew that our service hours were still a bit low as a result of cuts being made through the pandemic. So it was a recommendation that we knew needed to happen to make sure that the services were aligned with what ridership was and where we saw it would be going."

According to Adair, the changes are forecasted to cost about $176,000 this year and $545,000 next year when the city factors in revenue. He says an increase in ridership will help to offset those costs.

He says the increase is due to the growth in ridership by over 50 per cent in 2023. GOVA Transit saw the highest ridership last yearwith over 5.2 million passengers.

"Thus far, in 2024 year to date, we're about 35 per cent above those high 2023 numbers," said Adair.

John Lindsay, the chair of Sudbury's chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired People, says he along with Sudbury's aging population appreciates any increase in service. But, he's urging the city to look further to help seniors.

"We'd like to go a little further though and look at other communities such as Brampton and Oakville that are providing free bus service that is for those over the age of 65," said Lindsay, explaining the city of Brampton's move to offer free transit passes to seniors in February 2022.

Lindsay explains thatdecisionallowed seniors to use public transit after they lost their licences and were unable to travel around the city. He says the change improved their quality of life but also the economy as more seniors can travel to restaurants or shop easily.

"On one hand, as the city says, you may be losing some revenue from people over the age of 65, but in the general economy, you actually may see an actual increase in money being spent by these individuals. So not only are you getting them out, keeping them active, but it's also an economic boost as well."

He also mentions higher levels of government will invest more funding into transit if they see an increase in ridership.

"When you're doing things for seniors, you're doing things for the entire population we have an aging population and the more we can do to satisfy the needs of this particular demographic, it makes our city a better place to live."