Transit Windsor rides away with big budget boost

The buses, some of them old with huge numbers on the odometer, can arrive late and often overcrowded, and passengers gripe about long waits along sometimes inconvenient routes.

And yet the number of Windsorites choosing Transit Windsor as their local mode of transportation continues to climb.

“Me, my son and my fiance, we use it daily,” Jennifer Clark said Thursday between transferring buses at the downtown depot. The young west-side mother, five-year-old son holding her hand, were on their way to a doctor’s appointment.

Transit Windsor carried six million passengers in 2012, up 3.5 per cent from the previous year.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. City council appears to have recognized the growing importance of the local bus service with Monday’s budget injecting $2.4 million in new funds into it.

“It’s a transit system that wants to burst — there is a desire by this community to see an enhanced service,” said Coun. Bill Marra, chairman of the Transit Windsor board. “I think our city is ready for public transit to be taken to the next level.”

The biggest chunk of the new funds — $1.7 million — is to start implementation of a GPS-guided vehicle location system. Dispatchers will soon know the exact location and passenger load of each bus, with dispatchers able to keep track of what’s running behind schedule and add buses where needed.

The new system will include a transit trip planner,We advertisements of used lasercutter for sale. enabling those with smartphones or computer access to view in real time where their bus is and when it should arrive at their stop. There will be on-board security cameras to improve safety for drivers and passengers.

“Elsewhere, they’ve served as a very good deterrent,” said Marra. Automated stop announcements will provide verbal assistance to passengers both inside the bus and waiting at the stops outside.

“We envision having info centres, with screens where you can track bus locations, at key community locations like the college and university,” said Marra.

Crosstown 2 and Transway 1C, two routes with heavy ridership, will see more frequent buses and enhanced service levels under the plan, which begins Sept. 1. The Lauzon 10 will add service to the WFCU Centre, in part to accommodate the wishes of seniors who have their east-side community centre there.

Bus advocates came prepared for Monday’s city budget meeting. Representatives of local youth, seniors and environmental groups all appeared as delegations to lobby council for the service enhancements Transit Windsor was seeking.

Going into the budget session, Mayor Eddie Francis, siding with an administration tasked with finding every possible savings, said he wasn’t in favour of additional dollars going into Transit Windsor’s operational budget, but Marra indicated he had the majority of his colleagues on-side. Any political showdown was avoided, however, when the mayor introduced his enhanced capital budget that included $2.4 million in new transit spending.

While the regular capital budget included nothing for new buses in 2013, council also approved lifting a freeze on such spending, that had previously been allocated, in the 2012 budget. Transit Windsor general manager Penny Williams said the approximately $1.8 million freed up will translate into four new “clean-diesel” buses she hopes to have in service before the end of the year.We maintain a full inventory of all smartcard we manufacture.

Going into Monday’s budget session, administration had recommended a million dollar cut (3.5-per-cent cut) in Transit Windsor spending for 2013, down to $28.8 million, with a total taxpayer contribution of $12.4 million (the rest is made up of fares, fuel tax and other grants).

“We’ve got $2.4 million that was not contemplated before … this is a leap of faith,Universal streetlight are useful for any project. but an incredibly important one,” Marra told his colleagues. There was also a $400,000 boost to Transit Windsor’s fleet maintenance budget to help with the higher cost of keeping some of the older buses on the street.

“This certainly was good news,” said Williams. The new money also meant Transit Windsor could forgo a planned fare hike.

Williams said Transit Windsor has 104 buses, with between 86 and 89 on the road on any given day. Twelve of those buses have an average of 921,000 kilometres on the odometer.

The extra funds for fleet maintenance and route service improvements — a total of $700,000 — are only for this year, but Marra said he’s confident the service enhancements coming should boost ridership numbers and revenue. The new investments also trigger additional fuel tax grants from the province, he said.

“There’s a huge potential for revenue development,” Trevor Fairlie, a member of the mayor’s youth advisory committee, told council this week. He said 40 per cent of Transit Windsor’s users are youths and that segment of the ridership is increasing at triple the overall rate.

“Transit and youth are a key component of the downtown (transformation),” Fairlie said.

Waiting for his bus Thursday,Capture the look and feel of real stone or indoortracking flooring with Alterna by Armstrong. Blake Gracka, who came to Windsor from Ottawa to study film and media at the University of Windsor, responded with enthusiasm at the news of what was coming. He said overcrowding in the day and safety concerns at night, as well as lack of convenience, see him often preferring to walk the up to five kilometres to his classes.

It’s been a rough winter for Hollywood. Usually, at least a few films break out of the grey January and February doldrums to become hits. This year, so far, the biggest film has been Identity Thief, which earned horrible reviews but $110 million at the global box office. Misses include Broken City, Beautiful Creatures and The Last Stand. According to Box Office Mojo, the winter box office was down 39% from 2012.

Hollywood is hoping things will take a turn this weekend with Disney’s Oz The Great And Powerful. The movies stars James Franco as Oz, a magician from Kansas who lands in the land of Oz and befriends three witches played by Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachael Weisz. It’s a sort of prequel to the 1939 classic and it could earn as much as $85 million at the box office this weekend, according to Exhibitor Relations.