Sunday bus service may be fully restored

Still road-raged at your city councillors for last year's reductions to Sunday transit service?

There's a good chance they're going to fix that in 2018.

SooToday has learned from multiple sources that the consultant responsible for the city's transit optimization study has concluded it's definitely possible to turn back the clock, restoring full early-morning and evening Sunday bus service.

On June 5, 2016 the city slashed six hours from Sunday bus schedules.

Instead of 6:15 a.m., the first buses started leaving the downtown terminal at Queen and Dennis an hour later.

The last buses of the day left the terminal at 6:15 p.m. instead of the usual 11:15 p.m.

That saved the city $240,000 a year.

But it was a cruel hit for service workers who finished their shifts after the last bus and had to either walk home or pay expensive cab fares.

“When I started paying these cabs, it was a lot of money from my pocket,” said Sally Chateauneuf, a longtime waitress at Muio's on Queen Street East.

Chateauneuf's monthly cab bills added up to $200 a month.

So she decided to fight back.

She approached Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland for advice, then pulled together a petition calling for reinstatement of full 18-hour Sunday bus service.

A $110,000 review of conventional transit service is now close to complete, and consultant Wally Beck of Transit Consulting Network expects to present his first draft to Sault Transit bosses around the end of this month.

Beck says the Sault College strike has wreaked havoc on the passenger counts done on each bus route.

The recent departure of Don Scott, Sault Transit manager, also slowed down his review.

But Beck has seen enough to convince him that Sault Ste. Marie can definitely afford to bring back full Sunday bus service.

Beck's report will outline how that can be accomplished within the current 80,000 annual hours of service.

But cuts may be necessary in other areas.

Beck will propose changes to bus routes and talk about service frequencies.

He'll also address whether every bus needs to end up downtown once an hour.

"Everybody will get service. Some people will get more. We'll have to rob Peter to pay Paul," he says.

After he's presented his draft report to Sault Transit, Beck says there will be further opportunities for public input.

Then, early in the new year, his plan will be presented to City Council for ratification.