Bus service in this town is a disaster

Editor: I had the pleasure to head down to Queensway bus exchange to attend BC Transit’s open house on the future of Kelowna’s public transport network.

I got to see some neat bus upgrades, new routes and what was my first look at how Kelowna is going to benefit from the Trudeau government’s $3.4-billion public transport infrastructure fund announced late last year.

One of the key projects is an improvement of UBCO’s bus exchange starting in the fall. The price tag: $5.1 million. The city’s contribution is $2.1 million. This will give space for more buses to serve new/existing routes going to and from the university as transit in the Okanagan expands.

Is this really needed though? Absolutely. Why? Because, our government has devastated public transit in our city in the last 10 years.

Three per cent — that’s the percentage of all trips that Kelowna residents use public transit for. In Vancouver, it’s 22 per cent.

By 2035, BC transit demands our number gets up to at least seven per cent. I have two words for city council: Good luck. Kelowna’s public transit system is one of the worst in Western Canada, and it’s not hard to see why. Take my sister for example. She is an instructor at UBC Okanagan and lives in Glenmore. She can afford a car, but likes to take transit to and from school.

She has two options. Take the No. 6 Glenmore/UBCO Express or take two buses (97/7) to go to the mall, then up Glenmore Road to home.

Obviously, she prefers the No. 6. So when she picks up her bus schedule to see when it runs, she sees this: 8:20 a.m., 3:30 p.m., 4:39 p.m., 5:45 p.m., 6:40 p.m.

Movies play more than that, many times a day. So when her class ends at 1 p.m. or a lab runs late to 7 p.m., she has to take two buses.

And in the summer, the No. 6 doesn’t even exist. This is a 10-minute drive by car that the city requires you take two buses for 98 per cent of the time.

But she still does it. So when she gets on the 97 (our premier rapid high-volume bus line), the bus is jam packed. Why? I mean didn’t the city spend $200,000-plus on six doubledecker buses a few years ago?

We did, but the doors won’t open at every bus stop because the curbs weren’t built correctly for buses. They just hit the curb and close again.

Currently, we use the smallest buses for our busiest lines. Brilliant. Take any route or trip in Kelowna and it’s the same thing. Disaster. You’re lucky if your bus shows up and the

driver hasn’t been assaulted in the last 24 hours. What are we doing in this city?

So on second thought, I’ve got one piece of advice for Kelowna city council: Cancel the UBCO exchange expansion. Save your money. Write Justin Trudeau’s cabinet and say thanks for the offer but no thanks. We are just going to mess it up anyways.

Kelly Hutchinson, Kelowna