Council working to improve transit

At its last meeting, council, after hearing information from BC Transit regarding its recent public engagement focused on improving West Kelowna transit service, council agreed to:

• Direct BC Transit to integrate the Route 27 (Horizon) and 29 (Bear Creek) into one route and re-invest any resource savings into schedule reliability in 2018.

These routes have seen low performance. No funding impacts result from this change.

• Direct staff to include in the 2019 budget funding to improve off-peak (mid-day, evenings and weekends) transit service on the Route 97 Okanagan.

• Direct staff to include in the 2019 budget funding to improve off-peak transit service on coverage routes.

• Direct staff to include in the 2018 budget funding to introduce new seasonal (summer only) coverage transit service to lakefront area.

• Direct staff to include in the 2019 budget funding to introduce weekday coverage transit service to Shannon Lake Road area.

The additional estimated costs for these improvements is $186,847. The earliest changes could be made are in Spring 2018.

At that meeting, council also discussed:

Flood Recovery Plan 2017-2018

Council amended its 2017 budget to fund capital and operational costs related to the 2017 flooding that impacted the community.

The total estimated recovery cost to repair the City’s damaged infrastructure is $5,243,148.

The city anticipates provincial funding support for 80 per cent of the costs.

The city would need to fund approximately $1,048,630 of the total cost.

The City identified 45 recovery projects in the community including asphalt buckling, creek aggradation, damaged retaining walls, plugged storm drain systems, infilled treatment plant intake ponds and damage to parks.

The city will hire a flood recovery supervisor to manage the 45 projects, which will take up to 18 months to complete.