City council wants to create a minimum ridership policy for all Timmins Transit routes.
On Monday, they voted in favour of directing city staff to prepare a report showing the standards for comparable cities in Ontario.
Minimum revenue to cost standards is the targeted goal. In order to justify a route, there must be a set level for revenue.
Council recently voted against cancelling evening routes, despite poor cost recovery numbers, mainly out of concern for citizen safety for those working evenings. Soaring, and borderline unaffordable cab fares were also mentioned as part of the need to keep the routes.
Councillor Rick Dubeau was not thrilled with the idea of occupying staff hours with another report on transit.
"I understand that we always want to look at our operations. We know that our management is always doing that. They just came back with a recommendation a couple weeks ago. We've had this discussion. So I don't understand why we're bringing this back. It was voted on. It was basically defeated in regards to lowering the amount of service provided."
"The vast majority of council was against reducing the service," said Dubeau.
Councillor Noella Rinaldo was in favour of the motion.
"In the past, Councillor Dubeau is right, I was against certain routes being cancelled. Night routes for example," she said.
She felt that transit staff will be able to make well informed suggestions for council to consider. She mentioned ideas like switching certain routes from operating every 30 minutes to every 60 minutes.
"I think what this is saying is, have them re-look at the routes and see if there is anyway they can justify cutting them down in a certain way. But not us making the decisions on what routes and what times. I think they're the ones who are the best to be able to look at. And I think its something they should be looking at every year," said Rinaldo.
Councillor Mike Doody was 'ready and willing' to have staff move ahead with the report.
"It's going to come back here and if it doesn't meet criteria, you know, everybody has opportunity to vote for or against," he said.
Councillor Joe Campbell inquired about the possibility that the report coming back could look exactly like the one transit services recently presented to council.
Mayor Steve Black tried to clarify things.
"In terms of the budget, council voted against cancelling specific routes. This is discussing creating a policy to govern transit. So in my opinion, they are two completely different issues to be developed with staff recommendations," he said.
Dubeau was not satisfied with the explanation.
"I respectfully disagree. I think its just semantics. I think we're changing words, it's the same thing. Transit came back with their recommendations, we voted on it. You can just change some words and bring this back in this manner, otherwise I'll be doing that," he said.
The report must come back to council prior to August 30 of this year.
