Transit system getting three more buses
SYDNEY — Three more buses will soon be rolling along public transit routes across the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
That’s good news for a community that almost lost its transit system earlier in the decade when ridership was low and finances hard to come by. It’s also good news for students like Vineeth Kumar, Alen Mathew Ninan and Athul Krishna, all natives of Kerala in southern India enrolled in Cape Breton University’s petroleum engineering program.
“Yes, it is good news, we need more buses,” said Kumar, who with his friends was found Monday afternoon on a Sydney-bound bus at the CBU bus loop.
Not far away, a news conference was just wrapping up inside the doors of the Beaton Institute entrance of the sprawling multi-building campus after Nova Scotia Energy and Mines Minister Derek Mombourquette announced a provincial contribution of $250,000 for the purchase of the additional three Transit Cape Breton buses.
He noted the recent and increasing influx of international students attending CBU has placed a much greater demand on a municipal transit system whose future was questioned earlier in the decade.
“We’re planning for growth — we used to plan for a decline in service, but now we’re planning for growth,” said Mombourquette, who served as a municipal councillor when the CBRM’s transit service was under pressure.
“Growth has been a challenge in this community but it’s happening because of the amazing story that has taken place here on this campus and because of the work staff has done to recruit from all over the world.”
The story the Sydney-Whitney Pier MLA was referring to is the phenomenal increase in the number of new international students, mostly Indian, who are attending Cape Breton University.
More than 800 new students from abroad began classes last September, while an additional 500 registered in January. The increase has doubled the number of international students attending CBU, a figure that now stands at about 2,600. With most of those students finding accommodation in nearby urban communities, the public transit service is now in greater demand than it has been in decades.
Accordingly, CBU president David Dingwall said he was pleased with the boost to a transit system that is vital to the university.
“We see the challenge, the urgency, the necessity and the value of having a first-class transportation system — we always tell our international students that we want them to experience all of Cape Breton, places like the Fortress of Louisbourg, Baddeck and South Bar,” said Dingwall, whose reference to South Bar was a nod to his childhood home.
He then offered up some speculation on the future of local transit.
“Perhaps there will be no more diesel buses, maybe they will be electric or run on something else in the future.”
Dingwall was still at the podium when, in what may have been just plain coincidence, a procession of some two dozen international students entered the doors leading from the bus stop and headed past the podium and off into the labyrinth of corridors that criss-cross the university.
Meanwhile, CBRM fleet and transit manager Kathy Donovan said the additional buses will relieve the pressure on the system’s underpressure fleet that has been operating at capacity, and has very little manoeuverability because of bus, driver and mechanic shortages.
The quarter-million dollars allocated for the capital purchases of the three buses is part of $2.3 million the province’s Communities, Culture and Heritage has earmarked for community transportation this year.