Service seeking clients
Pilot project offers low-cost transportation alternative
SYDNEY — A provincially-funded pilot project aimed at helping CBRM residents find affordable and timely transportation to work and school is looking for participants.
The initiative, called Community Connects, is the brainchild of the CBRM Transportation Innovation Lab (TIL), one of four poverty reduction social innovation labs ongoing in Nova Scotia. The other labs are in Amherst (food security), Halifax (African youth employment) and Digby (child care).
Project spokesperson Chloe Donatelli said the ventures are based on community engagement and are focused on finding solutions to the community challenges such as transportation.
“It’s a chance for the province to test new models that help to relieve tensions in the lives of people who are living in poverty,” said Donatelli, whose consulting firm Common Good Solutions has worked on the project with a number of partners including the CBRM, the department of community services, Nova Scotia Health, New Dawn, NSCC, CBU, the Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Membertou Council.
“The results of these labs will help them better figure out where to put further investment.”
That investment will come out of the province’s $20-million poverty reduction fund.
The local pilot was initiated in April following consultations and studies that began in March 2018. In the end, the group chose the option it initially called Point2Point.
Essentially, the Community Connects enterprise is a shared ride service that involves all 10 taxi companies that operate in the municipality. The service works is fairly straight-forward. Clients simply call the project number 24 hours in advance to arrange a time and destination. Organizers then look for ride-share possibilities before setting it up with the participating cab company on a flat-rate per person basis.
But, according to Donatelli, the service will work much better with more users.
“Right now, we are trying to get the word out and get enough people so we can start building those more viable routes – we have to have enough users to make it worthwhile for the provider,” she said, who said the idea for the initiative came from the concerns of Cape Breton residents who were having transportation issues.
Donatelli added that the taxi companies are a natural fit given both the province’s desire to business to be involved in poverty reduction and the number of working cars the industry has across the municipality.
“There are 200 cars and 380 drivers, so the impact this model can make using the taxi service is much larger than if we were trying to scale up a non-profit with one vehicle,” she said.
The project, which will be constantly tested, monitored and refined, is scheduled to run until the end of September. A final report will be filed with the province in October. The government will then decide whether or not to commit more money to the initiative.