The City of Prince George is learning what it’s share of the federal transit dollars announced last month will be.
Modern replacement busses are coming to the city, supported by a new $23M transit maintenance facility which will allow local busses to run on cleaner burning compressed natural gas. The new buses will also include closed circuit cameras for safety, GPS locators and automatic passenger counters to help BC Transit optimize service.
The City will be pitching in 17% of the total budget while Victoria and Ottawa cover the remaining portion.
The current Mayor and Council made transit expansion in Prince George a priority at the start of their election, but were handcuffed by a freeze on BC Transit dollars until now.
Mayor Lyn Hall says “that in itself is significant, because for quite often we are seeing that we need to come to the table with 30-50%”
Hall calls the new facility “significant” for the city, “not just from the bussing perspective, but for what it means to us economically; that’s a job creator.”
The Mayor says Council has continued to push BC Transit to expand service on weekends and stat holidays, “because we heard loud and clear from students: ‘look we need better service on the weekends, and if you want us to participate in things that are happening downtown on stat holidays; Remembrance Day, Summerfest you need to provide that level of busing service to get us there.’”
The funding announcement today also featured two replacement HandyDART buses for 2017.
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