Thunder Bay City Council votes down transit service changes

Thunder Bay City Council has voted down proposed, temporary changes to the city's transit service.

Transit was proposing changing its summer schedule as it struggles with a driver shortage that's leading to last-minute bus cancellations. The proposal was to reduce bus frequency on many routes in the city, while increasing frequency on the Mainline route.

The proposal was defeated by council in a vote on Tuesday.

"Obviously the union is very pleased with the outcome," said Fred Caputo, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 966, which represents transit operators in Thunder Bay. "We're actually very happy that the council took the time to address all the issues that we brought up, and to actually look into the reduction and the impact it's going to have on the public."

"They asked pointed questions of transit management, and I think that kind of showed that there's still a lot of a lot more work to be done going forward."

Caputo said he hopes there will be more opportunities for the union and transit management to meet and discuss the issues affecting transit.

The proposal would have seen buses become less frequent on many routes in the city, while increasing frequency on the Mainline.

A presentation to council on Tuesday stated in 2025, transit was operating at about 96 per cent in terms of service delivery. The target is 99 per cent.

For the summer, that rate is forecasted to drop to 92 per cent, the presentation stated. Eighty-four operators would be required to maintain the status quo in the summer, but transit expects to have 79 operators (58 full-time and 21 part-time) available.

The presentation states that 52 operators are expected to be unavailable due to sick leave, vacation, or being on a leave of absence.

However, transit said that if council were to approve the temporary summer service reductions, 77 operators would be needed to operate at a service delivery rate of 99 per cent.

The schedule adjustments as proposed would have run from May 10 to Aug. 22, and would have aligned the service with available staffing numbers, improved reliability and minimized cancellations, and helped with transit stability while they hired more drivers, transit manager told council at Tuesday's meeting.

Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds, who voted against the proposal on Tuesday, said the city's current transit situation is "precarious," and the cancellations are having a major effect on people who rely on transit to get to appointments or work.

"I think a robust transit system is defining for a municipality, and right now transit is struggling," Foulds said. "As a councillor, I receive a lot of phone calls of complaints. We have some significant challenges with operator absenteeism and there's a variety of reasons for that."