Metrobus Transit Study.pdf - City of St. John's

St. John’s Transportation Commission (Metrobus) 2011
Market Assessment and Strategic Directions Study – Part D: Strategic Directions
facilitation by the province. This would likely entail the formation of a regional implementation
team which would include representatives from Metrobus and each participating municipality (St.
John’s, Mount Pearl, Paradise, Conception Bay South and Torbay as a priority). It would be
important for service standards to be developed to guide a consistent performance based approach
to service delivery across the region. This would ensure a minimum level of service for residents
while maintaining agreed to financial performance targets. For example, to meet performance
guidelines, it may be decided that a fixed route structure is not appropriate for a certain municipality,
but instead park-and-ride lots with express service is more appropriate. The performance standards
should be flexible enough to recognize that different operating strategies may be more effective in
servicing different municipalities.
Governance and financial arrangements would be major topics to address and the provincial role as
facilitator of regional cooperation is very important. Pending the development of a regional
coordinating structure, Metrobus should continue to offer interregional services to municipalities
outside the City of St. John’s on a full cost recovery basis.
Mount Pearl
The service arrangement with Mount Pearl should be reviewed. Mount Pearl is located adjacent and
to the southwest of St. John’s. Its current population (2006) is 24,671 and it is served by Metrobus
Routes 21 and 22 under a cost recovery contract.
Route 21 runs 7 days a week at a 60 minute frequency and connects to Village Shopping
Centre; and
Route 22 has 3 weekday morning and 3 weekday afternoon runs at a 60 minute frequency
and connects to Village Shopping Centre.
Average daily (weekday) ridership on Routes 21 and 22 are 389 and 106 respectively for a total of
495 passengers.
Total revenue service hours and ridership in Mount Pearl was compared to transit ridership in
similar sized cities. This is illustrated in Table 18.
Municipality
Table 18 – Mount Pearl Ridership Comparison
Service Area
Population
Revenue
Service Hours
per Capita
Ridership
Ridership/Capita
Mount Pearl, NL 24,671 0.28 139,000* 5.6
Corner Brook, NL 20,083 0.45 99,695 4.9
Whitehorse, Yukon 25,403 0.66 269,088 10.6
Yellowknife, NWT 19,155 0.48 167,958 8.8
Stratford, ON 32,000 1.01 547,484 17.1
Prince Albert, SK 34,000 0.53 259,608 7.6
*Note: ridership taken from passenger boardings on routes serving Mount Pearl from the 2007 Service Plan. Saturday
ridership estimated at 50 percent of weekday and Sunday as 25 percent of weekday.
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