Category: Coach

“Go Maritimes” provides useful tool for multi-modal transportation planning in Atlantic Canada

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Screenshot of the Go Maritimes website, with menus to enter travel end points, date, and search options.
A look at the Go Maritimes website. This tool makes it easy to see all of your various public transportation options for trips within the Maritimes.

Have you ever been trying to figure out how to use public transportation to travel between two places in the Maritimes, and had a hard time knowing if you’d found all of the options? If so, you’d do well to check out the valuable online transportation planning resource that is now available in the form of “Go Maritimes”. Founded by Wayne Groszko and developed in partnership with a number of individuals and local organizations (including the Ecology Action Centre, Dalhousie University, and the Province of Nova Scotia) Go Maritimes aims to make it easier for people to find the schedules for buses, shuttles, trains and other transport services to plan their travel in Canada’s Maritime provinces.

Trying to plan travel using public transportation in many parts of the Maritimes can be a challenge, and that often begins with simply being unaware of what options exist. With Go Martimes, users can enter any two end point destinations (where public transportation options exist) in the Maritime provinces and their desired travel date, and the site will then present them with the various options available, including specific schedules and estimated costs. Continue reading ““Go Maritimes” provides useful tool for multi-modal transportation planning in Atlantic Canada” →

Update on Rural Lynx project

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Here’s the latest on the Rural Lynx project in Southwest New Brunswick. The following was published in the Telegraph Journal on Sept. 1, 2016:

 

Southwest transit authority optimistic following meeting

Derwin Gowan, Telegraph-Journal

ST. STEPHEN • A meeting this week on funding for a proposed Charlotte County bus service went well, according to people who attended. However, the Southwest New Brunswick Transit Authority Inc. (SWNBTAI) still needs funding commitments by the end of the year to put the planned Rural Lynx service on the road, president Stan Choptiany wrote in an email after the meeting in Tourism, Heritage and Culture Minister John Ames’ Charlotte-Campobello constituency office in St. Stephen.

SWNBTAI board members met with Ames and New Brunswick Southwest MP Karen Ludwig’s executive assistant Marlene Chase. Ludwig called him later, Choptiany wrote. The MP indicated “strong support” for Rural Lynx, he wrote.“She encouraged the Board to apply for stage two infrastructure funding. The deadline is the end of September. We discussed application strategies.”

The SWNBTAI grew out of the former Charlotte County Transportation Working Group which used funding from the provincial Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation and the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission to develop a business plan. Rural Lynx would make two round trips per day connecting Charlotte County communities with each other and with Saint John , aimed at people going to work, attending university and community college, medical and legal appointments and other business. The business plan projects that Rural Lynx would need an annual operating subsidy, as do other transit systems, starting at about $325,000 but dropping to $200,000 as ridership grows. Choptiany has argued that the province could fund this out of money it already spends, for example, on transportation for social assistance recipients attending medical appointments in Saint John .

Continue reading “Update on Rural Lynx project” →

Charlotte County bus group continues push for bus funding

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The Southwest New Brunswick Transit Authority Inc. is continuing to push for funding to run buses between St. Stephen and Saint John NB. The group continues to be concerned about the additional isolation of rural areas in Southwest New Brunswick as public transportation options have disappeared, and many public services have been centralized to Saint John.

In a CBC article, Board president Stan Choptiany is quoted as saying “Rural isolation is very real for us, and we believe we have a well-researched business plan that indicates that a transportation service would be efficient and would actually save the government money in the long run.”

Read the full article here:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bus-route-charlotte-county-1.3725396

TAA supports the groups’ initiatives, and hopes to see public funding come through!