3.   Adoption of the Minutes

Moved by N. Hope, seconded by Councillor Bortolin,

That the minutes of the Transit Windsor Advisory Committee of its meeting held August 27, 2019 BE ADOPTED as presented.

Carried.

4. Business Items

4.1 Transit Windsor Master Plan

P. Delmore advises the Master Plan takes into effect the statistical information that was used, the two phases of public consultation and the strategic work of both the Transit Windsor Planning team working in conjunction with Dillon Consulting - Dillon Consulting from the perspective of knowing and understanding what’s the latest and greatest and how routes are developed, and the Planning team for providing input from the understanding of knowing Windsor.

The highlights of the Master Plan include increased service, doubling the hours of service (currently at 237,000 hours of service). The proposed hours of service is 400,000 hours by the time the Plan is fully implemented which takes into consideration the increased levels of service, more frequent buses and later service especially on weekends. From the route perspective, much more streamlined routes, smaller feeder routes that will infiltrate an area of the city whether it’s residential or industrial and bringing in the aspects of on-demand transit.

Councillor Holt notes the target is to have accessible transit to 90% of the population and asks what’s preventing us from achieving 100%? P. Delmore responds this relates to 90% of the population living within 400 metres of a bus stop. It’s not that the residents don’t have access, but it’s within the 400 metres which is the industry standard for a bus stop. It could be accomplished in other areas, however, it would result in more service, less ridership and a higher cost to achieve 100%. He agrees with Councillor Holt that this is essentially a land use issue.

P. Delmore reports on demand has two different components – one is providing a service to an area that doesn’t meet the needs for conventional transit and the other aspect of on demand is using on demand service to get to a point of conventional transit service. In the case of new subdivisions, if we get on demand and have the technology to complement it and if a new subdivision is being constructed, then we can get the numbers to warrant conventional transit and it will be added.