Bruce Grandy, a Fredericton city councillor and the chair of the mobility committee, said the transit service will be expanding to Sundays by the spring.
“The future of transit is going to change,” he said.
Right now, buses run Mondays to Saturdays. The new schedule would see Sunday buses following a very similar schedule to Saturday buses, with a few route changes that Grandy said will help make people’s commute to work more direct.
Last April, he said plans for a Sunday service likely wouldn’t be available until late 2024. However, he said now with data that the city has been gathering from buses, the city’s transit manager, Charlene Sharpe, felt comfortable with the change.
It couldn’t come soon enough for local resident Diana Lynn Smith, who has multiple sclerosis and can’t drive.
“I find that when there’s no services on Sunday, I have a very hard time going to church,” she said. Instead, she spends about $40 on taxis.
Nabaraz Esabaliya moved to Fredericton two months ago and said he relies on buses five days a week to go to work and pick up groceries.
“It’s very difficult on Sundays (because) the bus service is not available, (so) we have to catch a taxi, and it is a little bit expensive for us,” he said.
The new Sunday service will also include Fredericton’s accessible bus service, Para Transit.
Shelley Petit, the chair of the New Brunswick Coalition of Persons with Disabilities, said the change puts Fredericton well above any other transit system in New Brunswick.
“We’re really pleased with that, because people with disabilities go out on Sundays as well,” she said.
The city will have to hire people to drive, work dispatch and maintain the buses before the Sunday service starts in the spring. Grandy said finding drivers is always a challenge.
“A lot of industries are struggling to find workers, but I expect finding transit drivers won’t be as much of a challenge. It’s a good career. We just settled an agreement last year with the union for transit,” he said.
The fares will rise by 25 cents per trip.
Grandy said the $640,000 cost for the additional day of service, as well as inflation, is why the city is raising bus fares.
“$640,000 is hard to come by in a budget where you’re trying to solve a lot of issues,” he said.
“I wouldn’t mind paying $5 a trip, I really wouldn’t, compared to $20 or $25 in a cab. It’s bonuses all the way,” Lynn Smith said.
Petit said she’s glad that Para Transit will cost the same as other buses.
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