Call it Uber for Buses.
St. Albert Transit is kicking off a one-year, $30,000 pilot project this July 26 for on-demand bus service.
St. Albert currently offers Dial-a-Bus service in town on Sundays and late nights on weekdays and Saturdays. Passengers have to call one of three bus drivers during a specific 10-minute window each hour to get picked up – if they miss the window, they have to wait for the next one. Once on the bus, they might have a long ride home, as drivers often take circuitous routes to their stops.
This summer’s pilot will replace Dial-a-Bus with an app-based on-demand service starting July 26, said transit service delivery manager Ettore Iannacito.
Instead of calling during a specific window, riders will now be able to book a ride up to four weeks in advance using a smartphone app, website or telephone number. They’ll also be able to track their bus’s arrival time using the app.
Right now, Dial-a-Bus drivers stick to specific zones in the city and have to plot their routes manually, Iannacito said. If your destination is in another zone, you’ll have to ride all the way to a transit centre and catch another bus to get there.
The new service does away with zones and manual route calculations, Iannacito said. Instead, a computer would automatically plot the quickest route for a driver as calls come in, making for shorter trips.
Wave of the future?
Off-peak local service has always been a challenge in St. Albert, said St. Albert city councillor and transit advocate Wes Brodhead. On-demand service is the latest hot idea in the transit world, and could replace St. Albert’s off-peak local bus system.
“This is sort of the way of the future for public transit,” he said.
St. Albert is the first mid-sized transit system outside of Ontario to try out on-demand busing in off-peak hours, Iannacito said. Cochrane and Okotoks have on-demand buses that are proving effective even during the current pandemic.
Belleville, Ont., (population 50,716) converted one of its fixed night routes to an app-based on-demand service back in 2018 for a nine-month trial.
People made about 1,570 on-demand trips a month during the trial – a sizeable increase in ridership for that route, a Ryerson University study found. Pantomium, the company behind the app, estimated ridership on the route rose 300 per cent in the first month of the pilot, while per-bus mileage fell 30 per cent. Belleville continues to offer on-demand service and switched to exclusively on-demand last March due to the pandemic.
While fixed routes are still best during busy times, Iannacito said on-demand busing should be more efficient during off-peak hours, as drivers could pick up and drop off passengers anywhere instead of sticking to a set path.
Iannacito said he hoped St. Albert’s on-demand service would be more successful than Dial-a-Bus, which typically draws about 200 riders a month. If the service catches on, it could expand to other times during the week.
Visit stalbert.ca/city/transit for details.
