New Councillor fight Plan for west-end Bus terminal
Costante backs current College Avenue site over proposed relocation to hospital
A newly elected councillor is hoping to derail Transit Windsor’s plan to move its west-end terminal to the Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare campus on Prince Road. Fabio Costante opposed the move as part of his platform as he campaigned against incumbent Ward 2 councillor John Elliott leading up to the Oct. 22 election. He said as he went door-to-door, few residents seemed to be aware of the planned move. When he told them about it, there was nearunanimous opposition.
“It is a big municipal issue that’s going to affect the neighbourhoods,” Costante said Thursday. The day earlier, council’s environment, transportation and public safety standing committee deferred a Transit Windsor report recommending that administration negotiate a lease with the hospital for a terminal, because there weren’t enough councillors present to form a quorum. That was the last meeting before the new council comes on board at the start of December.
Costante is hoping he’ll be appointed to that committee and is vowing to fight against the terminal’s move from its current location on College Avenue.
The Transit Windsor report says there are many benefits to the hospital location, which will cost about $1.6 million to build. There’s better route connectivity, as well as many residents and hospital visitors, patients and staff who could use the service. And passengers on longer layovers could use the hospital facilities, including a waiting area and cafe.
But Costante said it’s the wrong location for the west end. The area around the hospital and the Sandwich area around College are different neighbourhoods, he said. The area around the hospital is primarily residential, where people don’t want increased traffic, especially noisy buses, on busy Prince Road.
They are also concerned that the new terminal will displace parking spaces at the hospital, resulting in more hospital employees parking on their residential streets. The Sandwich area, meanwhile, has lots of people, including students and seniors, who don’t drive and rely on public transit. Based on what he heard going door to door, the highest percentage of transit users live in Sandwich.
For those users, a terminal at the hospital is too far away, he said. “We should do as much as possible to reduce barriers of transportation and that means an accessible terminal where there’s a high percentage of users, and the second part is it’s being put in a community that doesn’t need it and doesn’t want it,” Costante continued.
“For all these reasons it just makes a lot of good sense to have it ... on College.”
Transit Windsor executive director Pat Delmore said he didn’t want to comment on Costante’s position.
The move is ultimately up to city council, he said.
“There have been public meetings on this and we’ve educated the public on the positives and we’ll see what happens.”
The terminal was moved from Mill Street to College Avenue/ Brock Street in 1998. It serves as the west-end transfer point for the Transway 1C, the Crosstown 2, the South Windsor 7 and the Central 3, with a four-bay bus platform, parking and bus shelters. It was located across the street from the College Street Community Centre where Transit Windsor had a small lunchroom for drivers, but the community centre was closed and Transit Windsor had to vacate the centre in 2017 as construction of the Windsor Essex Community Health Centre was underway. The loss of the community centre meant the loss of a fare generator for the terminal, according to a Transit Windsor report. “While there are some residential dwellings in the vicinity of the (community centre), it is not a large draw for transit ridership that a fare-generating transit terminal is expected to have.”
But Costante said the College Avenue terminal already has a new fare generator — the health centre. “I think we need to rethink the location and find a way to make it work.”