The Transit Coordinator for Huron Shores Area Transit says, so far, 2023 has been a very good year.
Susan Mills says she believes last year saw COVID restrictions begin to be relaxed and that's continued into this year, and people are starting to get out more and get back to life before the pandemic.
“We've been tracking our ridership and we're finding that we're 146 per cent up in ridership compared to the same period in 2022. So a thousand more trips were taken between January and April this year than last year," said Mills.
It also helps that more people are noticing the buses on the road and becoming aware of the service, and Mills notes they've been flexible enough to make changes to improve the rider experience.
“We added three new bus stops that were implemented in January and we found people had some difficulty reading the original schedules so we re-designed them with directional arrows and all the bus stops now have bus stop numbers," Mills added.
Their goal for this year is 16,000 trips, but Mills adds, if the current ridership pattern continues they should surpass that and be close to 23,000 trips this year. Mills says more information about routes, schedules, fares and Smart Cards can be found at HuronShoresAreaTransit.ca. Or, people can speak with a live operator about times and schedules by calling 1-888-465-0783 between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.