Public transit in transition

By Ron Seymour Sat. August 4, 2007 http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/stories.php?id=57796

The Stevens Road bus exchange on Kelowna‘s Westside consists of two cinder-block shelters covered in graffiti and filled with garbage. Trash from fast-food meals lays scattered under the wooden benches, along with cigarette butts, empty pop cans and thistles apparently blown over from an adjacent weed patch. That is how it looked at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, and that is how it usually looks. “This is pretty normal,” said Alex Maclean, who, like the five other people waiting for a bus, was standing nowhere near the disgusting concrete shelters. “It could use some cleaning up, that‘s for sure,” said Maclean, a 61-year-old resident of nearby Ross Road who was headed to downtown Kelowna. The Valley‘s three public transit systems are in line for millions of dollars worth of additional public investment. In the works are new express routes, new transit hubs and new buses.

Underlying all this extra funding is the essential belief that if governments build it, we will come. If they create a faster, better transit system, more of us will abandon our cars. But will we? A kilometre from the Westside Transit Exchange, as he filled up his Nissan Ultima at the Mac‘s convenience store and gas station, Keith Lawson was asked if extra spending on bus systems would convince him to climb aboard. “No,” he said simply. “Buses are slow and inconvenient. Why would I take an hour to get somewhere I can go in five minutes in my car?” Sheila Friesen, who was also filling up at the station, was asked when was the last time she rode a bus. “Oh, golly, I can‘t even remember. When I was a teenager, I guess,” she said, laughing. “I know maybe I should ride the bus, but I don‘t even think of it, to be honest,” Friesen said. Rising gas prices have forced some people to consider public transit, as has growing support for environmental issues. But transit managers know they face an uphill struggle to convince great numbers of people to swap their keys for a bus pass. “It‘s still very difficult to get a lot of people to consider taking the bus,” said Matt Berry, president of Penticton Transit System. “You still have a large hard core of people who want to keep using their own vehicle,” Berry said.

Even a relatively small system, such as Penticton‘s, has a plan to introduce more frequent service between Okanagan and Skaha lakes to try to draw more riders to augment its base of seniors and students. As well, Vernon Regional Transit is on the brink of increasing its number of buses to six from four, with the addition expected by the end of the year. “With the aging population, more and more people will be wanting to ride buses instead of taking their own car,” said Vernon councillor Patrick Nicol. But there are skeptics, people who say the extra investment in public transit systems is more about political appearances than delivering a service that many people actually want or use. “Spending on transit is popular for politicians right now, but the truth is the systems in many cities are just not that efficient,” said Maureen Bader of the B.C. division of the Canadian Taxpayers
Federation.

The spread-out nature of most cities, with many people living several miles from where they work or shop, means the automobile will remain the favoured transportation method, say critics of enhanced public transit spending. “The automobile is cheap, it‘s convenient, it‘s effective and it‘s very hard for any other kind of transportation to compete with that, except walking and bicycling only for very short distances,” said Randal O‘Toole, author of The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths, after a 2005 speech on urban planning in Winnipeg. O‘Toole, who gave a speech in Vancouver this spring, says private automobiles have provided access to better jobs, housing and recreation, and people are not going to give them up in favour of public transit. O‘Toole‘s views are harshly criticized by people who support expansion of funding for transit systems. After his address in Vancouver, a columnist described him as “O‘Toole the fool.” The political winds – even the Conservative winds – are certainly blowing in the direction of more money for transit.

Tory MP Stockwell Day was in Kelowna last month to announce $11 million to help fund the largest expansion in the history of Kelowna Regional Transit. The expansion gets underway later this month. Total service hours will rise a whopping 33 per cent annually. Most of that extra service will come in the form of the Bus Rapid Transit system, a new express route connecting downtown Kelowna, Highway 97, Rutland and UBC Okanagan. “It becomes the spine of the system, similar to SkyTrain in Vancouver,” said Mike Docherty, general manager of Kelowna Regional Transit. Though it has limited stops, the BRT is designed to connect to other routes throughout the city in an attempt to maximize convenience for commuters, shoppers and students. The BRT will be expanded to the Westside in the fall of 2008, once the new William R. Bennett Bridge opens. Plans also call for development of new, user-friendly transit exchanges in Rutland, Westbank and the Stevens Road one on the Westside. While the investments in transit are considerable, the results will likely take some time to unfold. “You won‘t necessarily see a very clear correlation from year to year between budget increases and ridership,” said Ron Drolet, a senior vice-president of B.C. Transit. It takes a while for people to become aware of enhanced service levels, he notes, and some of the extra budgets go for things such as rising gas prices, which don‘t directly affect ridership. Told of the coming improvements to the Central Okanagan‘s bus system, Alex Maclean, who was waiting at the unsightly Stevens Road exchange, expressed satisfaction tempered by a sense of realism. “I know some people won‘t ride the bus no matter how much the service is improved,” he said. “But for me, I‘d like it if it didn‘t sometimes take 45 minutes just to get downtown.”