Sault Transit plans another Sunday-night bus experiment

Don't look now, but Sault Transit is preparing to tinker once again with Sunday-night bus service.

Ten months after City Council bowed to public pressure and brought back the Sunday buses, low ridership has once again become a source of botheration.

A recent four-week study of Sunday riders between 7 p.m. and midnight found an average of just 445 passengers using buses citywide per evening.

City officials noticed an interesting trend among those riders.

Most bus stops weren't being used.

Passengers tended to be concentrated in specific parts of the city.

For example, the highest usage was on the Sault College bus, with an average of 98 Sunday-night passengers.

The least-used bus was North Street, which had just 22 passengers per Sunday evening.

Transit officials think it's high time we tried out on-demand buses.

On Monday night, City Council agreed to issue a request for proposals aimed at a one-year experiment with on-demand buses, to take place each Sunday night.

Instead of running big, half-empty diesel buses on fixed routes through sparsely populated neighbourhoods, Sault Ste. Marie is looking at a phone app-summoned alternative bus service for hard-to-service areas, especially those on the city's periphery.

Brent Lamming, the city's director of community services, says the idea is to further enhance Sault Transit's existing system and its recently optimized routes.

The city's 40-foot buses will used at the beginning, he told councillors.

The one-year pilot project is expected to pay for itself by putting fewer than the usual nine buses on the road each shift.

If we could reduce that to six app-summoned, computer-routed buses per shift, we'd save $89,824 a year. Five buses would save even more – $119,755 a year. Four buses would save $149,706.

And if we could manage on just three buses, the savings would pile up to an impressive $179,647.

Nine companies responded to a recent city request for expressions of interest in on-demand bus technology.

The city is asking for special dispatch options for riders that don’t have a home computer, tablet or phone.

Belleville, Ontario is trying out on-demand buses on a late-night (10:30 p.m. until 1 a.m.) that services its industrial park.

Belleville reports that ridership has risen from 46 riders a night to 250 or 300 a night.

It receives a couple of calls each evening from a contracted call-in line for riders who have no computer, tablet or smart phone.

"They almost had too much success," Lamming said of the Belleville initiative. "They said to be prepared. You may start with three or four buses but you may need five or six."

If the Sault's 12-month pilot project is deemed successful, city officials will be asking councillors to approve a three-year extension.

At that point, the city would also be interested in phasing in service for more difficult areas, weekend service for low-utilization routes and alternatives for ambulatory care service.

In other news, City Council voted last night to:

• promote development of a municipal autism strategy
• single-source a $738,583 contract for dock replacement at Roberta Bondar Marina to Poralu Marine Inc. of Saint-Eustache, Quebec without calling tenders
• look at a suggestion from Ward 3 Coun. Matthew Shoemaker to disable advanced traffic signals between 9 p.m. until 6 a.m. When Shoemaker floated the same idea in 2017, fellow councillors hinted he needed to stick a sock in it
• changed the zoning on the old Sault Collegiate Institute playing fields at 22 MacDonald Ave., allowing a 90-unit, 12-storey apartment building to become the latest addition to the Sault skyline