County Transit

Provincial grant pulls transit plan out of limbo

The County’s public transit plan took a great leap forward with the awarding last week of a long-awaited $500,000 grant from the provincial government. The money had been earmarked for the County by the previous Liberal government in early 2018, but was held back pending a review of finances by the current Conservative government following its election victory last year. The announcement was welcome news for Neil Carbone, Director of Community Development and Strategic Initiatives, who is one of the leading partners in the project to provide transit services across the County. The County transit proposal is the result of years of work by the Vital Signs Transportation Working Group in cooperation with stakeholders such as Quinte Access, Deseronto Transit and Community Care for Seniors as well as the municipality. The delay in arrival of the grant will not seriously affect the proposal. “The original plan contemplated starting in the fall of 2018, so we may be between three and six months behind, but it won’t be detrimental to the rollout,” says Carbone. “We will still be going through what is a five-year phased plan. The plan integrates existing transit options in order to gain more efficiency in the use of routes and vehicles, and access the unused capacity that we already have.”

The proposed transit plan will open up existing services, such as Quinte Access, to all residents in the County on a specified schedule. The County will be divided into three zones, and initial service will be provided in these zones for one or two days each week. Transit hubs will be established in Picton, Bloomfield and Wellington so that users can connect to Deseronto Transit for trips to Belleville. The initial strategy is to provide limited on-demand service in rural areas, where any resident can use transit that is currently restricted to seniors or handicapped persons in order to get to one of the connecting hubs. Later phases would see a subsidized taxi service available to in-town residents who are otherwise unable to get to the transit hubs. Carbone says there are options to provide other transit services. “We are considering in the summer of 2019 some potential weekend routes in and around the southwest part of the County, and servicing the seasonal employment needs around the County, looking at some of the agri-tourism operations, and students who may be employed at Sandbanks [park].”

One of the key stakeholders in the transit plan is the Vital Signs Transportation Working Group. Diane Milan is a coordinator with Vital Signs. She says that cooperation and support from Shire Hall has been great, and is pleased that the grant money has finally arrived and the project can now get started. “This group has been working together since 2013, when the Vital Signs report came out, and this pilot project is the culmination of all that work,” she says. “There have been surveys, interviews with service providers, time put in getting to know what the community needs. This is an opportunity to put all that research and networking and all the energy into action.” Milan says that a transportation network is essential for the health and well-being of the community.

“There are three issue areas that Vital Signs has been focusing on: transportation, learning and food security. One of the things that we’ve been well aware of over the last five years is the way in which these issues intersect. Transportation comes up as a barrier in so many of these community issues. In the learning group, young people who don’t live in the settlement areas may not be able to access community activity and community support. Transportation for getting people to food [access] has been a major barrier as well. The transportation project will get us to the point where we can address some of the core issues in this community.”