The City of Castlegar will not be seeing any transit expansions this year, despite BC Transit approving expansion requests from council in October.
During the July 15 Castlegar City Council meeting, Tom Dool, public transit coordinator with the Regional District of Central Kootenay, informed councillors that the province rejected the city’s plans to expand services to the Grandview Heights neighbourhood.
Implementation of the expansion project was supposed to begin in September, with BC Transit providing some of the funds from the $162.6 million provincial operating grant it secured this year for transit expansions province wide.
However, Dool said that, for the first time ever, requests for expansions across the province exceeded the provincial operating grant, leading to the decision to push back the Castlegar expansion.
“BC Transit endorsed that measure, but when they went to get money from the provincial government through the provincial operating grant, unfortunately, we did not receive funding for that expansion, and that’s simply because there is so much transit expansion demand out there right now,” Dool explained.
He said the province deemed an extension to Route 10 from Six Mile to Balfour, and the Castlegar-Nelson Connector Route 99, more urgent than an extension to include Grandview Heights in Route 34.
The expansion would have cost of $92,563 per year, with the city contributing $58,000.
In 2021, the regional district finished its Transit Future Services Plan (TFRS).
In the plan, 32 different service expansion options are listed. Dool said each service option is broken down into categories, with the highest category being a critical fix.
He said Routes 99 and 10 fit into that category because the current service poses a risk to public safety.
“For Route 99, people standing on buses travelling at highway speeds should not happen. People getting stranded in snowbanks in the middle of winter at night doesn’t need to happen either, and our buses were at capacity, hence the need for Route 99.
Similarly, what we’re seeing is that we have a Health Connections bus that comes all the way down through to Balfour, and then we make a connection at that bus, and we’re trying to bolster Health Connections for the north end of Kootenay Lake.”
Dool said the decision isn’t because the Castlegar expansion is of lesser importance, but said when BC Transit looked into they could approve this year, Routes 99 and 10 were deemed higher priorities.
It’s unlikely Castlegar will see any transit expansions before 2025/26.
Dool said the expansion process takes upwards of a year and a half from planning to fruition, but he said the district will continue to advocate for the needs of Castlegar residents.
“I’ve been very clear with BC Transit that this is now the priority. We’re leaning into this. This is an important fix, and we understand that it’s important to the residents of Castlegar. If the city wants to increase the degree of public transit within the municipality in a substantive way, we can just be louder.”
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