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Jack Knox: Buses are free and fast, but people are still reluctant to ride

Wednesday, 8:48 a.m. Sooke Road is far from packed with cars, but it’s noticeably busier these days. Buses? Not so much. When the No.
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Bus riders will return to paying fares on all B.C. Transit routes in Greater Victoria in June.

Wednesday, 8:48 a.m. Sooke Road is far from packed with cars, but it’s noticeably busier these days.

Buses? Not so much. When the No. 50 stops in front of the Juan de Fuca rec centre, it holds just half a dozen passengers, all sitting well apart, as though they’d had a tiff.

Maybe the transit system was swamped earlier in the morning, though the clues don’t point that way: The adjacent park-and-ride lot is almost empty.

It takes a mere 20 minutes for the double-decker to zip down the brand-new bus priority lanes and reach Hillside Avenue. During that time, only one more passenger, this one wearing a mask, boards. Like everyone else, she enters by what would usually be the exit door. Also like everyone else, she doesn’t pay. Drivers haven’t collected fares since March 19. It’s a physical-distancing thing.

In other words, B.C. Transit will whisk riders from the West Shore to downtown in 20 minutes, for free — and still the buses aren’t close to being maxed out. It makes you wonder what will happen June 1 when passengers must start paying again.

And it makes you wonder what will mean to B.C. Transit’s budget and, therefore, its ability to take people where they need to go, when they need to get there.

Some users will notice a change May 25 when the Victoria region’s bus system switches to summer routes and hours. That usually doesn’t happen until June, but with the school year disrupted and tourists stuck on the wrong side of the moat, the date was moved up. The usual increase of service to Butchart Gardens, Thetis Lake and the Swartz Bay ferry terminal, where sailings have been reduced, won’t happen this season.

The suspension of late-night Friday and Saturday service will stay for now. We will also, at least in the short term, see the continuation of restrictions capping capacity at 20 passengers for regular buses, 40 for double-deckers.

Longer term? Eventually the Victoria system will have to claw back ridership, which since March has fallen by 75 per cent compared to the same period last year. Presumably the decline reflects not just the loss of jobs, the cancellation of classes and the rise in downtown desk jockeys working from home, but a fear of sharing an enclosed space with a bunch of strangers. Our roads are now full of drivers who would rather pay for gas and parking than ride the bus fare-free.

Or maybe those drivers feel they don’t have a choice to begin with.

While Victoria city councillors might keep pushing for free buses, their peers in the rest of the region will remind them that the cost of fares is just one factor in coaxing drivers out of their single-occupant vehicles. Not everybody lives and works in the city centre, where service is frequent. To get people out of their cars — a necessity, given climate change — B.C. Transit must provide an alternative that is not just economical but pleasant (no creepy dude coughing in your ear) and convenient. The trend has been in the right direction (ridership between the West Shore and downtown jumped 44 per cent jump in five years) but gaps remain. And someone has to pay to fill them.

Even in a normal year, passenger revenue would account for less than 30 per cent of the Victoria Regional Transit System’s $147-million operating budget. The rest comes from the provincial government, local property taxes and a 5.5-cent-a-litre gas tax, with the latter providing something like $19 million.

Those numbers are now out of whack. Farebox revenue will be way down. With fewer vehicles on the road, gas tax money will drop, too. Note that even before the pandemic, B.C. Transit was fussing about the consequences of lower-than-expected provincial government funding in February’s budget.

Then there are the capital costs. Buses are expensive. It might not have earned as much ink as Stephen Harper’s 2015 election promise of $33 million for the McKenzie interchange, but Justin Trudeau’s 2019 election promise of $31 million toward the purchase of 118 B.C. Transit buses, most of them for Greater Victoria, was a big deal. Of course, it’s a bigger deal when there are passengers.

This isn’t just a Victoria problem, obviously. Around the world, COVID-19 is slamming head-on into the environmental benefits of mass transportation. The question is: for how long and at what cost?

jknox@timescolonist.com