Where'd all the bus riders go?

What happened to all the City’s bus riders?

BY PIETA WOOLLEY | LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE

The last full year before COVID, 2018-2019, Powell River’s City buses took people on about 600 trips per day.

Four years later – and after COVID’s worst – people were making just 378 trips a day. Bus usage, in the City, fell by just over 40%.

The same was not true for buses that serve the outlying areas. Like City buses, they saw a dip in usage during COVID, but buses to Lund, Stillwater and Texada bounced back and more by 2022 – with a 33% jump.

HandiDART, too, recovered usage post-COVID, with a modest increase.

The fares are the same: $2.25 each.

Zunga ridership, at about 11,000 trips per year, doesn’t account for much of the nearly 90,000 trip drop in usage.

In fact, this isn’t a local quirk. Transit use was down in 2022 by almost exactly the same amount  – 41% – across Canada since before the pandemic, according to a recent report by Statistics Canada.

The report notes that there are just fewer commuters now, as more people are working from home  – although that doesn’t explain the entire drop, of course.

When fewer people take the bus, the cost per trip goes up – as the same number of buses run no matter how many people ride or pay fares.

For City buses, taxpayers subsidizes each ride by $10.57. For trips to the outlying areas, taxpayers subsidized each ride by $20.32. And for HandiDart  – the BC Transit-run on-demand service – taxpayers subsidize each trip by $41.31.

BC Transit’s three types of funded bus in qathet:

Conventional Transit

Buses that follow scheduled routes through Westview, Grief Point, to Townsite / Wildwood and tishosem.

Rural Paratransit

Buses that follow scheduled routes to outlying areas: Lund, Texada, and Stillwater (and to Saltery Bay by request).

HandiDART

On-demand bus for mobility-challenged registered users only.