The Rocky View Regional Handibus Society (RVRHS) experienced its busiest year to date in 2015 and is projected to experience an even busier 2016, according to General Manager Paul Siller.
In a year-end report, Siller indicated RVRHS worked four per cent more service hours, travelled seven per cent more kilometres and had 16 per cent more registered passengers, resulting in a 19 per cent increase in trips for residents.
With that growth, Siller said RVRHS must face the challenge of becoming a larger organization to meet the demand increase it will continue to face.
“We’re still very much on a shoestring budget and you can only pull a frayed string so much,” he said.
By the end of 2016, Siller projects RVRHS will need two more drivers to accommodate the rise in demand of the service and the total distance traveled.
Though it costs anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 to get a new bus on the road, Siller said it also costs about $80,000 to $90,000 to run a bus full time 2,000 hours per year.
“You can only stretch the dollar so far,” he said.
Siller said RVRHS developed a five-year plan working with the six municipalities it services to map the gradual build up to an ideal scenario of resource growth and price per capita.
With a provincial average of $11 to $12 per capita for services, Siller said RVRHS realized it needed to rise from its less than $3 per capita rate to about $10 to sustain growth.
A fee schedule was worked out with municipalities that would take several years to gradually grow by 50 cents a year and is currently sitting at a rate of $6.20 per capita for 2016. The rate will increase to $6.70 cents in 2017.
He said the municipalities RVRHS works with have mostly been onboard with the rise, as it is easy to budget future cost increases as the service eventually grows to a sustainable $10 per capita rate.
“If we could get up to provincial average of funding, then it’s not a revenue problem, it’s a spending problem,” he said.
