BWG Transit is planning to expand services in the future. But in the meantime, some users feel left behind.
Mario Batista has lived in Bradford since 1988 when he was just 14, and recently he’s been experiencing his hometown from a whole new perspective — trying to get around in a wheelchair.
May 12 will mark two years since he went to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre for surgery to remove a tumour that was affecting his spinal cord, complications from which left him partially paralyzed.
Now, through physiotherapy and exercise, Batista said he is slowly regaining mobility.
“It’s been a long two years, because once you lose everything you have to retrain your body to get everything back. You can’t stop. I do all kinds of exercises,” he said.
While he has some equipment at home, Batista also relies on the BWG Leisure Centre as part of his journey toward full recovery.
Getting to the leisure centre could soon prove significantly more difficult though, as Batista relies on one of his friends for a lift most days, and that friend is set to move to Portugal at the end of June.
Fortunately, Bradford already has two regular bus routes, both of which make stops at the leisure centre and all of the town’s buses are fully wheelchair accessible.
“The problem is getting to them,” Batista said, explaining that like many residents, he must traverse a steep hill in order to access the nearest bus stop. “It’s almost impossible in the summer. Imagine in the wintertime getting to these places. It’s not accessible for me. It’s not accessible for a lot of people that are in wheelchairs.”
To resolve the issue, Batista would like to see an on-demand transit service in Bradford offering door-to-door pick-up and drop-off options for those riders with mobility issues.
“It would be great if you could go on an app (to book a ride),” he said. “They pick you up and drop you off and then go pick up other people.”
While looking online, Batista discovered he’s not the first person in Bradford to have that idea, and in April 2019, local advocate Daniela Pethick made a presentation to the town’s accessibility advisory committee suggesting just such a service.
Five years later, Batista is left wondering why it hasn’t happened yet.
“It’s not their fault that I’m in a wheelchair and it’s nobody’s fault that this happened to me, but it’s their fault that we don’t have this service yet available in Bradford. This should be a priority,” he said, noting that as the population continues to grow, so too does the need.
Long road to updated service
During that same April 2019 meeting, town transportation technologist Paul Dubniak noted that at the time, the municipal transit system had been in operation for five years and some buses were nearing replacement. Dubniak suggested keeping one of the old buses as a way to offer an on-demand service.
That never came to be, but work to address the issue continued.
Following that meeting, Dubniak provided two follow-up reports to the committee on how the town could provide on-demand transit.
The first of those was dated Nov. 14, 2019 and looked at other on-demand systems including York Region’s Mobility Plus and the County of Simcoe’s LINX Plus among others.
Based on those, the report examined the pros and cons of four options:
- Continue the service as is
- Partner with another provider with an accessible van
- Provide on-demand in addition to existing services
- Convert some or all services to on-demand
That report was received for information only, but the committee asked Dubniak to further investigate the fourth option of converting some or all services to on-demand, which led to his second report dated Feb. 13, 2020.
In that, Dubniak detailed the various methods and requirements to make the switch, the potential first steps for implementation and estimates on the wide range of costs depending on the chosen scope.
All of that work was expected to be part of a multi-year transit plan anticipated to be completed in 2021, but about one month after the second report, the world was hit with an international health crisis that upended not just transit, but life as we knew it — COVID-19.
“March 2020 and the pandemic saw a reduction of ridership and an uncertain future as travel patterns changed and work from home became the norm,” Dubniak said via email. “The system review was put on hold as the inputs would be skewed by changes in ridership, travel patterns, etc.”
All was not lost though, as the current council directed work to resume on the transit plan post pandemic and since then, an on-demand transit service was included as one of the central recommendations in BWG Transit’s draft master plan.
Staff plan to present a report on that to council in June.
Still, Batista called the wait “frustrating.”
“We need this to give people the freedom to do things, to not to be stuck at home all the time,” he said during a morning interview. “I’m stuck until 5:30-6 o’clock (in the evening) until my wife gets home, because I have no way out of here.”
Looking at different routes
Meanwhile Batista is in the process of applying for the LINX Plus service, which does provide door-to-door bus service, but isn’t exactly “on-demand.”
“You have to look at their schedule, they have to approve that day and then it’s not a guaranteed pick-up because the bus might be in Beeton, or it might be in Barrie,” he said. “You might be stuck there for three, four, five hours — who knows?”
Another option is to call BB Taxi, which currently offers the only accessible cab in town, though another could be on the way.
While that cab service is both on-demand and door-to-door, Batista has concerns over the price.
“From my house to the leisure centre is $10.50 a shot, so I’d be stuck paying $21 back and forth every day, $105 each week to go to the gym. It gets costly,” he said. “The cost of living has gone up a lot and it’s hard. I’m on disability.”
More recently, Batista has been corresponding with councillors to emphasize the need to bring on-demand transit to Bradford sooner rather than later.
He’s also considering other options to push forward with the exercise his body needs. Otherwise, he worries his recovery could “start going backwards.”
— With files from Miriam King
