City reviewing efficiency and cost of Swift Current public transit service

The City of Swift Current is taking another look at the public transit system to determine if the cost to provide the service can be reduced.

The cost of the service was raised during a regular council meeting, Jan. 14. Councillors approved the contract agreement between the City and the SaskAbilities Swift Current branch for the provision of transit services in 2019.

SaskAbilities has been contracted since 2006 to provide the Access Transit service for residents with mobility issues and it has also been operating the Swift Transit public bus service since its launch in April 2015.

The current operation contract was due for renewal for 2019 and SaskAbilities indicated it wanted to continue to provide these services.

SaskAbilities provides both services on a cost of service basis plus an administration fee. The total contract fee for the period Jan. 1, to Dec. 31, 2019 is $34,399.31 per month plus GST. This fee consists of a monthly amount of $14,407.06 to provide the Access Transit Service and $19,992.25 for the Swift Transit service.

The cost of the new contract is about $500 per month lower than last year's contract due to reduced service hours on the Swift Transit blue line.

Councillor Ryan Plewis noted that SaskAbilities is an excellent partner in providing the transit services on the City's behalf.

“We're very thankful for that partnership and it's that partnership that's allowed us to actually continue to offer this service as long as we have,” he said. “I know that there are people who rely on this service and I know it's an important service to some people in our community, and what I'm asking is that I hope we try to make this a more relevant service for more people in our community to make it make sense moving forward for all of us.”

He indicated that the City is trying to find the right way forward in providing the Swift Transit service and there is a need to make it more efficient, which was the reason for the service reduction on the blue line in the new contract.

“Transit is something that we talk about a lot as a council when it comes to budget time,” he said. “The reason why we talk about it a lot when it comes to budget time is because this is a service that we are providing on a trial basis to the city. This trial has been an extended trial, I guess would probably be the best way to put it, as we continue to seek efficiencies to make this service more efficient.”

He noted that the bus service is subsidized, and there is probably no transit service in North America that is able to generate a profit.

“So I want to just take this opportunity to say that as a council at budget time we decided to continue with this service, but I do want to stress to people that we did not decide to continue with this service indefinitely,” he said. “We haven't committed to it 100 per cent. This is still in trial mode. We still need to make sure that this makes sense for the citizens of the City of Swift Current.”

The new contract with SaskAbilities includes a requirement for the contractor to collect data about the use of the service, which must be submitted monthly and annually to the City. Plewis therefore urged supporters of the public transit system to use the service, because the City's decision on the future of the service will be based on ridership data.

“If you are somebody who believes in this bus service and somebody who wants to see this bus service continue, I would encourage you to find out more about it and to do what you can to support the service,” he said. “Because even with the sales of advertising, even with a chartered bus service that I see is available here, the revenues that come in don't even come close to covering the cost. We are very interested in trying to shrink that gap.”

City General Manager of Infrastructure and Operations Mitch Minken and Manager of Engineering Services Jolene Peters provided more details about the transit review after the council meeting. They noted the City will only be evaluating the Swift Transit service and they are not considering any changes to the Access Transit system.

“So on the Swift Transit, that’s the public system, we’re currently seeing about 24,000 riders a year,” Peters said. “It has been slightly going up every year and with that we’re trying to reduce expenses just to get our cost recovery a little closer, a little tighter to make it feasible.”

The cost recovery rate on the Swift Transit service with the current ridership is around 30 per cent.

“It’s probably lower than we would like it to be in terms of the revenue generated from those rides,” Minken said. “We use some comparators like transit across Canada. There are numbers that are out there that we use as the comparators and at the 24,000 we’re a little below where we would like to be.”

The City has already introduced a number of initiatives in an effort to increase ridership, for example the priority bus service for high school students.

Swift Transit has been reviewed annually since its introduction in 2015, but discussions during the budget cycle resulted in a request to do a review of the public transit service during this winter.

“Council is looking for as an efficient a system as we can run, so both in terms of service and also certainly as in terms of cost,” he said. “If the demand is there in the community for the Swift Transit system, we should make sure that ridership is there and that people are using it. Otherwise if we’re providing it for a very low number of riders, then we’ve got to look and rationalize the system that we have. Is this currently the right system that we need for our city or do we have to look at some other options. Fewer hours, different routes, whatever other opportunities we might be able to come up with to make it still able to provide a service to the public, but to make it more affordable for the City itself.”

Council is looking for as an efficient a system as we can run, so both in terms of service and also certainly in terms of cost.” Councillor Ryan Plewis