Transit buses will no longer service the northwestern part of Avondale. A loop that went by the Northern Addictions Centre, the Composite High School, and the Muskoseepi Park trails was added to Route 5 as part of a pilot project in March 2017.
However, the city says it got barely any use, with an average of one person getting on and two people getting off at the four new stops a day. Interim Transit Manager Steve Harvard adds that the four minute addition also made the bus consistently late.
“What we found was that it impacted particularly route 3 at Prairie Mall and the transfers there. It was a negative impact.”
The study discovered that the number of times the bus was more than five minutes late doubled in the months of April to October from 2016 to 2017. Transit also got complaints from passengers who continually missed connections to routes 1, 2, or 3 at Prairie Mall.
Harvard adds they’re working to improve their on-time performance across the entire transit system.
“We are instructing our drivers that during the non-peak times you’re to wait for five minutes because we do know that there are certain routes that will take an extra two or three minutes and we certainly want to make the system work for as many people as it can so they can get their transfers.”
A Transit Master Plan was approved by city council last fall, which will likely mean a complete overhaul of routes that will affect the vast majority of riders.
The route 5 extension will officially end on June 1st, closing stops 500, 500A, 501, and 501 A. After that, the Route 5 bus will turn right on 108 Street as it leaves the college and head directly to Royal Oaks.