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Morinville bus grinds to a halt

The wheels on the Morinville Interlink commuter bus will stop turning on April 30. In a unanimous vote council decided to cancel the service and end the contract with St. Albert Transit. The Interlink bus makes daily trips between Morinville and St.

The wheels on the Morinville Interlink commuter bus will stop turning on April 30.

In a unanimous vote council decided to cancel the service and end the contract with St. Albert Transit.

The Interlink bus makes daily trips between Morinville and St. Albert with a loop of the community early in the morning and a trip into the St. Albert Centre transit exchange, followed by a trip late in the day from the exchange back to Morinville.

Since its inception almost 10 years ago the bus has gone through many different changes, but has continuously suffered from low ridership.

Recently the bus had been averaging six or seven passengers a day and on occasions dropped to a single rider.

Councillors first gave town administration direction during last December’s budget discussions to find a way to cancel the service as quickly as possible.

Coun. Joe Trapani said he simply can’t justify the cost to ratepayers who don’t use the service.

“Right now it is just cost prohibitive to have the service for only seven people.”

He said he has heard a lot of concerns from residents about paying for town services they don’t use and the bus was often an example at the top of the list.

The bus contract with St. Albert transit cost $54,000 a year, with ticket revenue for the bus covering $13,000 of that cost.

Fiona Jakielaszek who rides the service regularly to get to work, said losing the bus service is a big inconvenience.

“It means that I will have to be dropped off here every morning and picked up every night.”

She said she understands council doesn’t want to pay the money for a service with such limited ridership, but she doesn’t understand why some other options weren’t considered.

Administration did present council with a host of other options that could have been used to replace the contract with St. Albert Transit.

That contract cost the town approximately $250 per day, while a private bus company would have cost $365.

The option of using a cab company that owns both a 24-passenger bus and a 15-person van would have been $190 per day. Purchasing a 15-person van would have broken down to $149.76 per day and using the town’s existing community bus would have cost $192 per day.

Trapani said the community bus might have been a good option, but scheduling it would have been difficult.

Trapani said the service could come back if council determined there was real demand for it, but he would want to see enough people to make it sustainable in the long term.

“If we could get something like 50 people per day it might be workable.”

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