As T3 Transit prepares to tweak some routes, company is missing former international riders

A recent survey shows sentiment about taking the bus in the greater Charlottetown area has dropped in the past five years, though a Stratford official says the demand is increasing in that P.E.I. town for T3 routes that easily connect to others.

Jeremy Pierce is the director of recreation, culture and events and the deputy CAO for the Town of Stratford, which is serviced by T3 Transit along with Charlottetown and Cornwall. He said this is an opportunity for the privately operated and publicly funded system to grow.

"People ... want to see more opportunities to move about within Stratford, but also have a quicker time, quicker access routes, to get to larger centres like Charlottetown," he said.

One possible reason he cited for the loss in ridership momentum: changes to Canada's immigration system.

"The slight downtick, we believe, has to do with some of the immigration changes. We've seen a decrease in the number of visitors using the transit system to go to educational institutions like Holland College and UPEI," Pierce said.

"They've seen downturn in terms of total immigration in the province... That was probably one of our larger demographics utilizing the transit system."

Mike Cassidy, the owner of T3 Transit, said they are seeing ridership numbers start to flatten out, and even dip below last year's level on Stratford routes. He agrees that the immigration changes might be to blame.

For the first half of 2025, for example, Cassidy said, overall ridership is "rather flat — we are witnessing roughly one to two to three per cent growth compared to the first six months of 2024." 

In contrast, during the first six months of the years 2022 and 2023, "when we were coming out of COVID, we were experiencing close to 15 to 25 per cent growth, period over period, so we have seen a saturation in the ridership this year compared to last year." 

Cassidy said T3's drivers have told him they can see population dynamics affecting ridership numbers every day, given that the system's small size lets them get to know a lot of their regular passengers.

"We [had] students from Holland College. We know that they were billeted in Stratford, right there on Heron and Rankin; we picked them up every morning. There was six of them. Guess what? They're gone," he said.

"We know we are losing people." 

Cassidy said some of these passengers left "Thank you so much for being my bus driver" notes for T3 staff as they left on their journey to seek permanent resident (PR) status in Canada.

"They tell the driver, 'Look, we have to move away, we have to go back home, we can't get our PR card, we have to go... [to] another province in Canada' to try to get their PR," he said.