Amherstburg jumps on the bus bandwagon
Another county town has voted to give its residents the option of parking the car and taking a bus into the city.
Transit Windsor is launching a pilot project in September that will see its buses ferry passengers to and from Amherstburg for $4.75 a trip.
Amherstburg Mayor Aldo Dicarlo remembers hopping on the bus as a child in the 1970s and riding into downtown Windsor to catch a movie and check out the stores. That choice of transportation ended nearly half a century ago after the former Sandwich, Windsor & Amherstburg Railway Co. morphed into Transit Windsor in 1977.
“For me, growing up, you couldn't wait till you were 16 to get your driver's licence,” said Dicarlo. “There was an understanding that you had to drive to do things in life.”
Times have changed in Amherstburg, and elsewhere across Essex County, as people move out of the city but expect some of what they left behind, like publicly funded transportation.
“The loudest complaints we were getting were from people moving in, saying they love our community, they love our cost of living — but they couldn't understand the lack of transit,” said Dicarlo.
A self-described car lover, he said there's a growing number of people, among them seniors, who prefer not to drive. And then, he added, there are “the environmentalists — they've been very vocal.”
The return of public transit to Amherstburg has been years in the making. Dicarlo said town council approved a Transit Windsor pilot in 2019, with funding following in 2020, but then “everybody had to stay home” due to COVID-19.
The biggest number of users of the new service is expected to be students living in Amherstburg but attending college and university in Windsor. Then it's seniors needing to get to medical or other appointments or to shop and visit in the city. Dicarlo said the initial plan was for weekday service only for much of the year, but that young adults lobbied for year-round, seven-days-a-week bus service due to work commitments and greater job opportunities in the city.
“There's more casual work in the city, for example at the malls,” he said. Offering bus service into the city, he added, will also address a demand for such transportation from those wanting to return to Amherstburg to live but who don't have access to personal vehicles.
“I think all the municipalities in the county are now pulling in a different demographic of people,” said Dicarlo. Providing public transit in Essex County's towns, he said, “it's now a common discussion.”
The service will be initially limited in scope, with three bus runs (morning, afternoon and evening) to and from the city and a local loop capturing Amherstburg's more densely populated neighbourhoods. There will be a stop in Lasalle, and the northern terminus will be at Transit Windsor's primary west-end hub at Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare on Prince Road, where passengers can board buses circulating along a handful of other city bus routes at no extra cost to transfer.
The town had set aside $80,000 for the pilot, but the service is expected to run at about $200,000 annually. Dicarlo said the municipality will “certainly ” be applying for senior government grants to cover part of that cost under programs designed to wean more people out of personal vehicles.
Transit Windsor executive director Tyson Cragg said adding service to Amherstburg will not require adding new buses to the current 117-bus fleet. Amherstburg council approved this year's pilot go-ahead on Tuesday night, and Cragg said Wednesday his staff would already be out this week surveying the route and potential stops.