Turner Valley council’s decision to not move ahead with public transit has the Town of Black Diamond searching for a new partner.
At its Jan. 15 council meeting, Black Diamond Town council directed administration to seek potential partners in its plan to provide public transit after Turner Valley council defeated a motion to continue discussions with potential partners for public transit in a split vote at its Dec. 16 council meeting.
Turner Valley council’s decision followed concerns of costs to taxpayers and the failure of the On-it Transportation service that briefly provided commuter service between Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Okotoks and Calgary before discontinuing in June 2018 due to low ridership.
The Towns of Black Diamond and Turner Valley undertook a community transportation strategy the past several months to explore opportunities to improve transportation within and between the towns and nearby communities as equal partners, with an agreement to share the costs.
“We have lost one partner so we are now in a position to do our due diligence in exploring other partnership options,” said Black Diamond Mayor Ruth Goodwin. “We would like to ensure that we have not left any stone unturned in order to explore and continue on with the transportation project. As council members and a governance board, we are responsible for the social impact that we have with the decisions that we make for our community.”
The Towns worked with Watt Consulting Group to develop a transportation study and created an ad hoc municipal transportation steering committee. As a result, the Black Diamond and Turner Valley Community Transportation Strategy was established.
The strategy proposes two eight-to-12 wheelchair accessible passenger vehicles, two bus stops in each town, dispatch and trip booking software and indoor vehicle storage. It also suggests enhancing the Community Access Program, which delivers subsidized taxi travel, co-ordinating on-demand transportation on select days and offering special event and group trip charters using existing multi-passenger vehicles.
Goodwin said public transit could meet the needs of youth, seniors and persons with disabilities, and sees it as a much-needed service in the town of more than 2,500 people.
“It’s important we do our due diligence to explore opportunities with other potential partners and being able to remain open-minded, which this council is in securing the future of transportation within our community, and possibly exploring transportation outside of our community as well,” she said.
Black Diamond and Turner Valley were approved funding through GreenTRIP and the Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, which have committed to pay two-thirds to 80 per cent of capital costs for transit.
“The GreenTRIP program and funding for the different projects that we have received is something that’s very important to our community,” said Goodwin. “If this opportunity is not seized at this point this community will not see this type of a grant for a very long time.”
Information provided by Black Diamond administration shows that Turner Valley withdrawing its participation leaves Black Diamond with a price tag of $91,900 in capital costs and $26,500 to $49,900 in operating costs, depending on the frequency of service and ridership revenues, if it were to pursue public transit on its own.
Before the decision was made by Turner Valley council, Black Diamond council agreed last month to direct administration to prepare a terms of reference for an intermunicipal transportation committee to oversee the next phases of service development implementation as outlined in the strategy and move forward with recommended service and partnerships.
Council also directed administration to undertake further discussions with the Foothills School Division, Boys and Girls Club of the Foothills and other potential stakeholders to determine the detailed nature of the proposed Community Transportation Partnership.
Black Diamond Coun. Jackie Stickel told council last week that the Town should look at as many options as possible and reach out to all possible partners to continue its efforts to establish public transit.
Coun. Brian Marconi agreed.
“We do have a social responsibility to the community to investigate a little further to ensure we can run a system and find potential partners to make up the lack of one,” he said.
Deputy Mayor Daryl Lalonde said while it’s unfortunate Turner Valley chose not to participate, the decision won’t prevent Black Diamond from exhausting all options moving forward for the benefit of the community.