In addition to increasing service on Inter City Express (ICE) bus Routes 901 and 902, (see story on page 6), City council endorsed expanding service on Route 900 - which currently only runs on weekends and statutory holidays, and has stops in Airdrie, at CrossIron Mills mall near Balzac and at the McKnight-Westwinds LRT station in northeast Calgary – at its meeting on March 16.
Beginning Sept. 1, the service will operate seven days-a-week.
Route 900 was launched as an eight-month pilot project on July 5, 2014.
According to Transit Co-ordinator Chris MacIsaac, the service has proven to be very popular with an average of 118 riders per day. Customers are those wanting to go to the mall or into Calgary at off peak times when the regular ICE bus service on Routes 901 and 902 is not running.
Operating costs for the service are paid by CrossIron Mills, according to MacIsaac.
“That would be the driver, the fuel, the maintenance, the insurance – costs that are reflected every time we put that bus out on the road. Depreciation costs are not included in that model,” he said.
Alderman Fred Burley questioned whether or not a long-term agreement with CrossIron Mills had been negotiated.
“We implement this service, we’re running it for a couple of years and then CrossIron says ‘we’re not going to do it anymore’, then we’re on the hook for everything,” he said.
MacIsaac said he was not concerned that a new agreement will be negotiated.
“CrossIron Mills has been an excellent partner in this project. We will work in collaboration with management from CrossIron Mills to define a service that achieves both party’s service outcomes,” he said. “We will also work closely with our partners at Calgary Transit to ensure the expanded Route 900 service provides a high level of service integration with the Calgary Transit network.”
In order to increase service, MacIsaac said Airdrie Transit will need to purchase two additional buses for its overall fleet at a cost of between $130,000 and $175,000 depending on the type of bus. Approval for this expenditure was originally approved in the 2016 Capital Budget, however, council agreed to move it to the 2015 budget.
According to MacIsaac, a desire to improve service in the region was also part of the reason Airdrie Transit wanted to expand the service. He said post secondary students would now be able to ride Route 900 at off peak times, alleviating some of the crowding issues on the regular ICE bus, routes 901 and 902.
Burley was the lone vote against the motion to increase the service to seven days-a-week, citing a concern about residents leaving Airdrie to go do their shopping elsewhere.
“This service is being paid for by all Airdrie taxpayers,” he said. “I think the service is great. It’s going to be great for kids going to school and all that but it’s just the CrossIron component of it.”
“When we initially launched the service in November of 2013, one of the things we did go out to do was to survey our business community,” MacIsaac said. “There was not significant feedback from the business community about the loss of a customer base.”
“I don’t know if we’ve really seen that much of an exodus on that service to really impact the customer base here in Airdrie,” he added. “What we have seen, though, is an increase in the number of people coming to Airdrie from Calgary, whether that’s for employment, for meeting up with family, or shopping, these are new riders who wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get to Airdrie without public transit.”
