People riding the bus in James Bay are in for changes in the new year.
After considering public input, B.C. Transit will revise routes starting Jan. 2, providing more direct access from James Bay to Oak Bay, Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria High School and Central Middle School.
The plan maintains the No. 3 route that connects James Bay with the Cook Street area, something many people requested.
“Sometimes we add service where we just add buses to existing routes, but this is one where we’re reorganizing the routes,” said B.C. Transit planning manager James Wadsworth.
Transit will work in the coming weeks to let people know how to use the new offerings, he said.
“A key part of that for the public is learning the new transit system and which bus stop to go to, and what the new schedule is.”
Less extensive changes are coming in a variety of areas.
Wadsworth said measures such as the ones in James Bay are part of the larger vision of the Transit Future Plan that includes things like rapid transit and major bus routes.
“You hear us talking about bus lanes and things like that,” he said. “Part of [the process] is going out to each of the neighbourhoods, and changing the transit system by neighbourhood or by area.”
That was done on the West Shore two years ago to deal with new developments such as Royal Bay and Westhills, Wadsworth said, and now a similar effort is being introduced in James Bay.
“We’re also doing local area plans for Tillicum/Burnside and the Jubilee area,” he said.
“So we’ll probably be having some more changes coming up in the next 18 months as we figure out things the public would like to see and how it fits into the strategic Transit Future Plan.”
The steps being taken in James Bay will be good for bus passengers, Wadsworth said. “We’re simplifying the system and getting a couple of new routes that are connecting with the community.”
There are currently six bus routes in James Bay, Wadsworth said. “They do different things at different times of the day, and we carry about 1,700 riders per day.”
The changes mean there will be three routes in James Bay. “This is relatively the same service level, but it’s all on three routes instead of six,” Wadsworth said.
He said conversations with the public brought out issues like the James Bay system being “a bit complex” and lacking consistency.
“Because we have a whole bunch of different routes, they operate on different service levels and sometimes as they go down the road you can get buses bunching together, which no one likes to see, or too far apart,” he said. “What we’re doing down there fixes that.”
One step has been to take the existing No. 2 route and extend it into James Bay. It deals with parents’ concern for their children being able to commute directly to middle and secondary schools, since James Bay has only elementary schools. “This is one of the key reasons we chose having this route go down into James Bay.”
The changes are being made within the existing budget, Wadsworth said. “We’re always looking at better ways to use the resources that we have.” A full review of what is being done will be conducted after six months.
Here are some of the changes for James Bay and other areas:
• No. 2 Oak Bay/Willows/Downtown will provide service to Fisherman’s Wharf and the Menzies/Simcoe shopping area, then connect to downtown and Oak Bay.
• No. 3 Beacon Hill/Gonzales will now turn north onto Foul Bay Road and will connect with the Royal Jubilee Hospital, then continue to Victoria West as No. 10.
• No. 30 Royal Oak Exhange/Beacon Hill/James Bay and No. 31 Royal Oak Exchange will no longer circulate through James Bay, while No. 19 Hillside Mall that went through James Bay is being discontinued and will be replaced by the expanded No. 2.
• No. 7 UVic/Downtown and No. 21 Camosun Interurban/Downtown will be connected, eliminating the need to change buses on some trips.
• No. 61 Sooke will make three extra round trips, meaning hourly service from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and will make an earlier start on Saturday and Sunday.
• No. 82 Sidney is being expanded to improve service to the Tsawout First Nation.
