After two years of decreased demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocky View Regional Handi-bus Society's ridership rebounded in 2022, and is now nearly back to pre-COVID levels.
In late January, the non-profit society released its last quarterly report from 2022, which highlighted a 47 per cent increase in trips for its municipal program last year compared to 2021. Overall, the statistics showed Rocky View Bus' ridership in 2022 was only 4.5 per cent below its 2019 levels.
“Despite the challenges of the pandemic, things are definitely starting to rebound – especially in Cochrane,” said Paul Siller, the society's executive director. “We’re seeing our municipal ridership rebound, in a couple cases to even greater than pre-pandemic levels.”
Cochrane and Crossfield in particular accounted for those increases, Siller said, with each demonstrating an 11 per cent hike in demand in 2022 from 2019. Chestermere saw a three per cent increase in demand during the same time frame.
Rocky View Regional Handi-bus Society is a regional bus service that offers partially subsidized transportation to seniors, people with physical disabilities, and others facing transportation barriers throughout Rocky View County. The buses' service area encompasses more than 4,000 square kilometres and includes passenger pick-ups in Crossfield, Cochrane, and Chestermere.
The service – known as Rocky View Bus – has been around since 1980. In 2022, Rocky View Bus provided 11,626 total trips, according to its report.
In order to make their trips as cost-effective as possible, Siller said a lot of planning goes into ensuring buses are efficient in whom they are picking up and dropping off. The bus driver may pick up several passengers in different communities while dropping them off for their various appointments.
“We’ll pick up [two people] from Cochrane, pick up someone from Bearspaw along the way, drop two of those three people off at Foothills [Hospital], one at the [Peter Lougheed Centre], and then skip across to Chestermere,” he explained. “Now we can drop one off, pick up another one, and then pick up someone from the Lougheed on the way back to Cochrane.
“That’s the level of efficiency we’re able to provide under our operating model. A lot of other agencies would offer a separate [model] for each municipality.”
According to Siller, passengers pay a fare of $4 for every 10 kilometres, which accounts for about 10 per cent of operating costs. The rest of the society's revenue comes from government grants, funding from municipalities, and fundraising efforts.
“We’re working with $9.75 per capita and the cost for Calgary’s level of service is $36 per capita,” he said, of the society's annual budget. “So, we offer the municipalities a lot of value for their dollars by doing things...a little differently than in other organizations.
“We don’t even operate on a shoestring – we stretch that shoestring hard.”
Touting the need for new infrastructure, Siller noted the organization currently has 15 buses, but some of the vehicles are “really, really, really old.”
Most of the passengers who rely on Rocky View Bus require rides to specialized medical facilities in Calgary that they can't access in their own communities, according to Siller. The 2022 report indicates nearly 6,000 of the society's trips last year were to medical-related appointments.
“We’re seeing a lot more people who are finally getting their chemo appointments,” he said. “There’s six or eight going for dialysis, which is pretty significant stuff. [That’s] two or three times a week.”
However, Siller noted Rocky View Bus is a limited service. At the moment, rides are only offered from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. from Monday to Friday, and registered passengers are limited to 10 round trips or 20 one-way trips per week. He said increased funding and resources would allow the non-profit to improve that availability.
Siller said the growth in ridership Rocky View Bus experienced in 2022 was positive after two COVID-hampered years, and he hopes the trend will continue throughout 2023. He noted that just before the pandemic, the society was experiencing 17 per cent growth a year.
“It’s less about ‘disability transportation' and more about helping people get to those things they need,” he said.
—With files from Tim Kalinowski/Rocky View Weekly
