Fredericton Transit pilot program not meeting expectations

Fredericton Transit manager Sandy MacNeill says the discounted transit fare pilot program isn’t producing outstanding results just yet.

“Obviously the intent was to get some additional people on the bus or even to get people to try transit in those off-peak hours… (but)  we haven’t seen it yet,” MacNeill says.

“Looking at the raw data, there’s nothing that stands out. If there has been an effect, it has been relatively small.”

The city launched the pilot program in July to increase ridership during off-peak hours.  Until Oct. 31, passengers can ride the bus for 50 cents after 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays. The standard fare is $2 per ride.

MacNeill says he will present the results to city council when the pilot program ends.

“We will do up a report based on our figures and see just exactly where we stand, whether it was effective or not and what the ridership effect was,” he said.

In order to extend the discounted fare program, MacNeill says the city must consider the cost of maintaining the program.

“If you’re putting (passengers) on for a quarter of the price and you don’t carry four times as many people, we lose money,” he says.

Introducing programs like these, he said, is an important step to increasing ridership because they often attract people who have never used transit.

“If we can just get people in the frame of mind to use transit,” he says.

The Universal Bus Pass program that St. Thomas adopted five years ago is one example, MacNeill says.  Since its introduction, ridership increased significantly.

“When we started five years ago with the STU transit pass, at that time the perception of transit amongst the university community is far different than it is now.  By getting that program in place, a lot of people tried the bus.”

MacNeill hopes the U-Pass program adopted by the University of New Brunswick Graduate Student Association, which represents about 1,000 students, will have the same results.

It will be left to council to decide if the discounted transit fare program will be extended or adopted.

Short URL: http://www.newbrunswickbeacon.ca/?p=384

Posted by Jody Nabuurs on Sep 27, 2009. Filed under News, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.