Back to the bus
Victoria County considering bus service again
Imagine living in an area for all of your life and then, for reasons often beyond your control, not being able to leave it because you no longer have any access to transportation.
It’s a situation that some are experiencing in parts of Cape Breton lacking easy access to public transportation. Not being able to drive, able to afford to drive or even being prevented from driving because of medical issues means some people can no longer get to grocery stores or even to their medical appointments.
“People actually make the decision to miss a medical appointment because they have no other option — I’ve seen it a thousand times,” says Jessie MacDonald, office manager for Strait Area Transit, based in Port Hawkesbury.
Strait Area Transit offers a scheduled service for Inverness County and Richmond County residents as well as the town of Port Hawkesbury. It has applied to the Nova Scotia
Utility and Review Board to expand its services into Antigonish town and county and is presently in discussions with the Municipality of Victoria County to provide a service there. The UARB hearing will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
In 2016, an initial attempt to give service in Victoria County failed but MacDonald believes there’s more demand now and the focus has changed from just students needing to travel to providing a service to those who need to get to medical appointments and tend to personal matters.
“We knew the need was there but I don’t think it was specifically pointed in the right direction,” says MacDonald.
Victoria County Warden Bruce Morrison says council is
looking at the idea of a transportation service but he wants people to realize that nothing has been finalized yet and it won’t be a free service.
“There is funding available through the province of Nova Scotia to do some transportation pilot projects so with that funding available we are in discussions to see if there is a service we can provide from northern and southern Victoria County and going into the CBRM,” said Morrison. “That could be for medical appointments, that could be personal business, that could be for shopping — is there sufficient demand for it. Because we do know — and I don’t want to get ahead of myself — it’s not going to be a transit service from the point of view that there will be a bus leaving every day at 9 o’clock at the turnoff — what we are looking at is the dial-a-ride model that’s currently in use in Strait Richmond, the Strait area.”
Ingonish is one area affected by the lack of public transit and Deputy Warden Larry Dauphinee has organized a service that gets isolated people to their appointments and even the grocery store. Using money from his district budget and working with the local Lions Club and a taxi company, the service has been in use since November and he’s hopeful he can keep it going, at least until a more permanent solution has been found.
“It’s been so successful I don’t want to quit it now,” says Dauphinee. “People would really miss it now that we’ve started it. The big thing is a lot of seniors are using it — I’m seeing seniors you haven’t seen out of their houses probably in a year or two — I see them at the grocery store, I see them at the bank, I see them at the convenience store, so it’s really going over.”
About 33 to 35 people are using the free service and Dauphinee stresses that it is not being unfairly taken advantage of.
“That’s not happening — the people that need it are the people who are using it. They’re being very co-operative in using it only when they have to. It’s worked out extremely well that we’re getting comments from people who don’t even use it who think it’s the best thing that ever happened.”
Dauphinee says for some seniors, family members are not always available to drive them and they may not want to intrude on other people.
“A number of people have commented to me that without the service they would have missed or had to cancel their appointments,” says Dauphinee. “Simple things like going for groceries — I don’t think we realize how hard it is for a senior to get over to get groceries and a lot of them don’t want to inconvenience people if they do have family members. It’s been great and I’ve been very pleased with the response and the comments.”
MacDonald says Strait Area Transit will be presenting a business plan covering possible transportation options to Victoria County council in April.
“If the business plan is viable, it’s certainly something council will be making a recommendation on,” said Morrison.