CANMORE – A preliminary look at potential route for a seasonal transit route for Grassi Lakes, the Canmore Nordic Centre and Quarry Lake has been unveiled.
The route, which isn’t yet set in stone, would connect the hotel and visitor accommodations along Bow Valley Trail to areas of town such as Spring Creek Mountain Village and the Town centre to the highly visited areas.
“It connects well with regional and local routes, so there’s opportunities to serve new areas of the community through transfers in Spring Creek, Bow Valley Trail, the hospital during the seasonal route,” said Andy Esarte, the Town of Canmore's manager of engineering.
The route, which was shown to council during the June 21 committee of the whole meeting, was one of four options and has the largest reach to residential, visitor and tourist units.
Though tailored to increase public transit access to more highly visited areas of Canmore, the aim is to provide a public transit option to lessen the traffic congestion of recent years associated with a significant increase in vehicle traffic to those highly visited locations.
The service is intended to connect to the popular spots, but will also fill gaps in local service. From start to finish, it would run 60 minutes.
A staff report stated the Visitor Information Centre by the Trans-Canada Highway would be a turnaround point and Grassi Lakes would be the end of the line at the opposite end. The hourly service would stop at 12 existing and 18 new transit stops.
A bus has been purchased and outfitted, while transit stops are planned to be finished in 2023.
Alberta Environment and Parks started infrastructure work on the parking areas at Grassi Lakes that will have a transit stop.
The staff report highlighted a capital project will be presented for the 2023 budget to build new stops in town. While proposed for 2024, there is a possibility it could begin in 2023. It would depend on driver availability for Roam, Alberta Environment and Parks' approvals and the Town completing the necessary infrastructure work.
According to the report, Alberta Environment and Parks approached the Town and Bow Valley Regional Transit Services Commission (BVRTSC) in 2020 to look at potential transit options to Grassi Lakes and the Canmore Nordic Centre.
BVRTSC proposed a May to October route and Canmore council approved it in March 2021. Alberta Environment and Parks approved $944,000 last March for a three-year pilot that will begin in 2024. The province's contribution is coming from revenues raised through the Kananaskis Country Pass.
Esarte said if the Kananaskis Country Pass is cancelled – which is an NDP campaign promise – it would not impact the grant funding for the pilot.
The funding for the project includes $780,000 from GreenTrip and a further $670,000 from Alberta Environment and Parks. The Town approved $275,000 in 2021, while Roam is estimating $150,000 in annual operating costs. It is estimated paid parking revenues will fund the Town’s share of those operational costs.
While council spoke of the route hopefully beginning in 2023 rather than 2024, much of the discussion centred on exploring potential for a full-time route instead of just seasonal.
If the route was full-time, Mayor Sean Krausert said it would address key strategic priorities such as addressing affordability and increasing public transit to unserved areas of the community. Roam transit has also struggled to hire drivers for seasonal routes, so it would possibly make it easier to hire drivers for a full-time route.
“It seems to tick so many boxes,” he said.
Town staff is working with the transit commission to look at how Roam can expand in the next eight years to meet Canmore’s 2030 ridership goals, which could include increasing routes. Any discussion on doing so would be done at the annual budgeting that takes place each fall.
“From an affordability point of view, it’s not going to get better unless we take bold action and it’s also not going to be something we can necessarily wait five years for. I’m hoping there’ll be some encouragement there. … I don’t think that this council is afraid of doing something that’s difficult if it can make things better,” Krausert said.
“Bold is the flavour we need to be taking in order to address our community issues. I love Roam transit. I love the work being done and I want more of it faster if possible.”
Coun. Tanya Foubert said ridership levels have nearly bounced back from pre-pandemic numbers, and in some cases surpassed them, showing the demand is there for the free public transit.
“I think we’re at the point to add another bus route in our community is fantastic,” she said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day and everything that we do to add to transit and mobility and transportation infrastructure in our community builds the system of the future and I think we’re seeing that now. … I’m excited to go into the next budget and make an effect on transit.”
