Tank: Bus rides increase in Saskatoon despite public transit unrest

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Link’s rebranding for Saskatoon’s rapid bus overhaul is creating pressure to provide good service and avoid smart people like me adding the word “weak” to the mix.

But that’s a slightly better fate than smart alecks noting that the city’s rapid bus system doesn’t provide rapid transit.

Since the proposed public transport improvement falls far short of the rather meagre international standards to be considered true bus rapid transit, the name change is a good idea to avoid comparisons with other systems elsewhere.

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But while a rebranding seems like a smart move, it’s a mystery why it took two years to come up with Link, with help from a panel of residents and a multinational called Entro, which specialises in branding.

The city paid Entro $373,280 for help choosing the name, a pittance of the estimated $250 million it would spend on the planned bus rapid transit system, $183 million of which comes from federal and state sources. The new system’s rollout has been pushed back to 2028.

But the rebranding comes at a good time, as there is also good news for Saskatoon’s public transit system after a decade of lagging behind, starting with the city council’s lockout of public transit workers in 2014.

The labor dispute was a huge setback for public transport: it was not until 2019 that the number of passengers exceeded the figures for 2013, the last year before the lockout, when the number of registered journeys reached 9.6 million.

Unfortunately, this success was undone the following year by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw passenger numbers drop by more than half.

Last year, the number of registered rides rose again to 7.4 million, more than three-quarters of what it was before the pandemic.

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This is great news for Saskatoon, especially at a time when public transportation worldwide has declined so much due to the pandemic that some have questioned its future.

It is impossible to know to what extent the number of travelers increased last year compared to the year before (2022), because the technology that counts travelers apparently did not work reliably. Yes, somehow that is possible in our age of mobile phones and other electronic developments.

But we do know that the number of rides has increased impressively, from a low of 4.3 million in 2021.

These numbers seem less impressive in the context of Saskatoon’s growth. Last year, the city surpassed 300,000 residents with 15,000 people added. That’s an entirely new neighbourhood, or as many residents as Saskatchewan’s eighth-largest city.

Even if Saskatoon returns to pre-pandemic ridership levels, it will represent a smaller share of the transportation market in a more populous city.

Still, the increase in ridership does provide good news for all taxpayers, regardless of whether they ride the bus: a substantial jump in revenue. You may recall that the unexpected windfall from bus fares helped City Hall post a $9.9 million surplus in 2023.

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According to Saskatoon Transit’s annual report, bus fare revenue rose to $13.5 million last year, a 26 per cent increase from 2022 and 97 per cent of the money collected from riders before the pandemic.

No public transportation system pays for itself completely, but the more people pay through fares, the less need there is for property taxes to cover the costs. And the fact that people are willing to pay for public transportation shows growing confidence in a system that in recent years has been likened to driving on a potholed road.

In addition to the lockdown and pandemic, former transit director Jim McDonald was fired in 2022 during an audit investigating why buses were unavailable the previous winter due to maintenance issues. The audit blamed management, but not McDonald specifically.

McDonald’s promising replacement, Jim Puffalt, the former city manager of Moose Jaw, only stayed on the job for a few months last year despite making $76,245.

In May, three people were stabbed in separate incidents on city buses, prompting new public transportation director Mike Moellenbeck to announce safety measures, including the presence of community police officers starting this month.

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While public transport continues to show promise, people need to be assured that the service is reliable and that bus travel is safe.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

[email protected]

twitter.com/thinktankSK

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