Anyone watching the Town of Cochrane Committee-of-the-Whole meeting Oct.16 might’ve been left wondering, “Who’s driving this bus?”
Cochrane Transit users or anyone interested in the issue who was looking forward to some kind of policy direction coming out of the Town council meeting Monday will have to wait – nothing was decided.
Anyone confused by that statement (it was an agenda item) should get in line behind council and administration, both of which expressed some difficulty in figuring out what exactly they were supposed to be discussing.
Community Services director Mitch Hamm’s presentation to council left more than one councillor asking for more clarity on what exactly their options were, and what questions he was asking.
To be clear and fair, Hamm’s presentation was nothing if not well-written and concise. It’s just that it wasn’t what council may have been expecting after a May 2023 meeting ended with a request for options.
The problem it seems, is that council wanted to know what certain options would cost before giving Hamm the broad strokes direction he was asking for.
Coun. Marni Fedeyko admitted she was struggling with the conversation, and Coun. Tara McFadden said she felt Hamm’s frustration.
Her opening comment might have characterized up the debate best.
“It feels very much like a chicken-and-egg conversation and nobody knows whether we should call it a chicken or an egg, or who’s in charge of calling it a chicken or an egg, so it’s still a very frustrating conversation all around,” she said, after most of council had weighed in.
After a brief history of transit in town, she added that to hear that “nobody knows what’s going on, is quite frustrating.” She said she supports transit, but not at any cost.
At the end of his detailed presentation, Hamm had presented four scenarios, including advantages and disadvantages of maintaining the current system, making both short-term and long-term investments, or having the town divest itself of transit.
But the overriding theme of the questions and answers between council and Hamm was confusion.
Coun. Alex Reed said he didn’t have enough financial information to comment on Hamm’s options, to which Hamm responded the financial information in question was provided last May.
Coun. Susan Flowers, a proponent of transit, said the issue was “so complicated” before saying she favoured some kind of an increase in funding.
“We’ve hugely grown in population so we have to put more money into it – there’s no way we can nickel and dime it and expect it to work,” she said.
“But we need your recommendation,” she said.
Mayor Jeff Genung, in summing up the debate, said he thought that where they’d landed was that in order to come up with the type of detailed information being asked for, it may be necessary to hire a consultant to prepare a full report.
Coun. Morgan Nagel had expressed his view in previous meetings that the town should divest itself from transit if it proves too expensive. He somewhat reluctantly agreed with the rest of council that if run properly, transit would be a good thing to have.
While council struggled with what exactly they were being asked, it finally became a little clearer: administration couldn’t come forward with concrete options for different types of transit systems unless and until they had some kind of strategic direction from council on what type of system(s) should be under consideration, since there were so many options.
If that makes any sense.
A recommendation that a transit expert would go a long way in helping council decide what to do seemed to garner support (nothing was formally voted or decided on, as this was a committee-of-the-whole meeting).
This year the buses saw between 68,000 and 72,000 riders, up from 48,282 in 2022.
The rider rating on the RideCo app is currently four stars out of five, and some users have provided some flattering feedback, particularly about their drivers.
Others were not so impressed, with one saying he’s been late for work twice because of COLT and will lose his job if it happens again.
So it’s back to the drawing board for the future of transit.
The next time Transit comes up before council will likely be during budget deliberations later this year, where a proposal to hire a consultant will be in the proposed budgetary books.
