An extension of late-night weekend bus service is being proposed as part of a $2-million expansion of service for Greater Victoria next year.
The 2,200 additional hours of late-night service — part of a planned 20,000 hours of service expansion — would extend bus service out of downtown by one hour on Fridays, Saturdays and some holidays. Buses would leave as late as 3 a.m.
B.C. Transit staff say extending late-night service is expensive, and the 2,200 hours is the equivalent of 6,300 hours of regular expansion hours.
“Although extending the existing service on Fridays and Saturdays does not require additional buses, it does require additional resources to provide transit supervision and yard operations until the last bus returns to the yard at approximately 3:45 a.m.,” a staff report says.
“That’s what the commission is going to have to come to grips with,” Victoria Regional Transit Commission chair Susan Brice said.
“It is an important service and one that is being called for, but by directing our resources to that particular service expansion, we are forgoing almost three times as much in other directions.”
Brice said the commission in June approved allocating $2 million for 20,000 hours of service expansion in 2019-2020. At today’s meeting, commissioners will decide whether they agree with the recommended service expansion priorities.
The late-night service should be welcomed by both downtown residents and businesses, whose organizations have written to the commission asking for extended hours.
In a letter to commissioners, Paul Gandall, president of the Victoria Downtown Residents Association, said extending late-night service to 3 a.m. would “significantly reduce noise, disruption and safety concerns for downtown residents after bars and other venues close by offering both patrons and workers an affordable means of quickly exiting the core area.”
Reid James, chair of the Hotel Association of Greater Victoria, said finding affordable housing is a challenge for many hospitality-industry workers.
“Consequently, many hospitality workers live well outside of the downtown because of high rents and limited availability of housing. Similar to bar patrons, our employees cannot access public transportation when their shift ends unless they own a car and have access to parking,” James wrote last month.
Other proposed service improvements include an additional 13,000 hours on the “frequent-transit network” crosstown routes and an additional 700 hours to improve summer-weekend connections to ferries.
The late-night proposal would have the last bus leaving downtown between 2:30 and 3 a.m. on select routes.
Routes considered for improvements include: 4 UVic/Downtown; 6 Royal Oak/Downtown; 14 UVic/Vic General; 15 Esquimalt/UVic; 27/28 Gordon Head/Majestic/Downtown; and 50 Langford/Downtown.
The staff report notes that the Transit Future Plan recommends a service standard of 15-minute frequency from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, on frequent-transit network crosstown routes.
“A number of crosstown routes do not meet this standard and are experiencing challenges in regards to on-time performance and peak capacity. Improvements are required to keep pace with increasing demand. Additional service hours will improve transit-service levels and address capacity issues,” the report says.
Crosstown routes to be considered for improvement include: 9 Royal Oak via Gorge/UVic via Hillside; 16 UVic/Uptown; 26 UVic/Dockyard; and 39 Westhills/Inter-urban/Royal Oak/UVic.
The additional 700 hours for weekend ferry-orientated routes would bring improvements to the 70 Swartz Bay/Downtown and the 72 Swartz Bay/Downtown routes.
