Nelson residents were invited to share their thoughts on the direction of the city’s transit system last week when BC Transit held two open houses.
“For the most part I thought they were fine,” said Barry Nelson who is part of the Nelson Transit Community. “There’s a few things that I and the others noted with regards to the routes that we made suggestions on, but I think for the most part having the three separate routes is a good change and very positive and should encourage people to get on the bus and support that system as well as supporting our environment.”
BC Transit is recommending three separate routes for Nelson, which would include one to Fairview and separate routes to Uphill and Rosemont.
“Having studied and actually proposed those basic routes to BC Transit by the Nelson Transit Community Group some time back, we have travelled those routes with a current bus driver to see that they are good routes to follow. Now it looks like about a 20 minute service, so every 20 minutes there is a bus coming to your bus stop — which to me is wonderful,” said Nelson.
The community group has a set of goals that they are looking for and Nelson said one of them is to attempt to reach 98 per cent of the population within five blocks of Nelson, three blocks from people living in a high density location and one block from seniors facilities.
An area that the group is still looking to see changed is with regards to Sunday service which was eliminated last year.
“I would venture to say that 99.9 per cent of the people had a sticker for the request of the return for Sunday service,” said Nelson. “In many ways and by all of the council they were very supportive of the work that we’ve done and wanted to see that it could be incorporated in the integrated program for the two regional districts.”
The group is now turning their focus to looking at ways to promote increased ridership.
To participate in the Nelson Transit Community Group contact Nelson at 250-352-2704.