Converting bus stops for disabled won’t cost extra after all

Nearly all bus stops in Lake Country can be converted to meet accessibility guidelines without spending additional money, town council heard this week.

Funds already available through the Transportation for Tomorrow program will be sufficient to convert all but seven of the 54 bus stops within five years.

“When we went out with boots on the ground and had a better look at things, we realized we were able to do more with the money we have than we thought,” Sid Smith, a town engineering technician, said Wednesday. “So we’re going to stay the course for now.”

An earlier staff suggestion was that authorizing an additional $120,000 would be necessary to convert all the bus stops so people with mobility challenges could use public transit.

Converting all the stops may not be practical in the short term, as some of them are in rural areas without sidewalks where major road upgrades are not currently envisioned.

In Kelowna, 357 of the city’s 597 bus stops are considered to be fully accessible to people with disabilities.

The remainder will be upgraded when roadworks are undertaken, as transportation budgets allow, and even when requests for the improvement of specific bus stops are made to the city.

Specifications for handicap-accessible bus stops are set by BC Transit. Among other things, the rules relate to such things as a certain width to the sidewalk, nonslip surfaces, sufficient lighting, good sightlines and a curb letdown in the vicinity of the bus stop.

In Kelowna, as in Lake Country, many of the nonaccessible bus stops are in rural areas, where there are no sidewalks and the stop itself is marked only by a sign on a pole, says Mike Kittmer, the city’s transit service co-ordinator.

The city spends about $40,000 annually converting bus stops in more urbanized areas to an accessible standard. But additional funds can also be spent for such a purpose as part of a larger road-improvement project, Kittmer says.

If a person with disabilities requests a specific stop near his or her home be made accessible, the city will consider the request, he said.