Calgary-area municipalities are making their first pitch for provincial funding for regional transit projects, but Okotoks was left of the list.
The Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) is asking for $200 million from the first round of funding from the Province’s GreenTRIP program for projects in Calgary and surrounding communities.
Okotoks Mayor Bill Robertson said Okotoks is not included in the first application to the Province because it’s not ready to go forward.
He urged local commuters waiting for transit service to Calgary to be patient.
Robertson said the Town wants to make sure its plans are in place before making any decisions regarding funding.
“We want to make sure all our ducks in a row and we know what the government will allow and won’t allow us to get funding for,” said Robertson. “We definitely will be applying for it, but we’re still in preliminary stages.”
He said he hopes a commuter service could be up and running next year. However, Robertson said it’s a tight budget year and the Town could do well to wait, watch and learn from the experience of other municipalities in the region.
If approved, the funds will be used for projects in Cochrane, Banff, Canmore, Airdrie and Calgary. Projects include buses for the four communities outside the city as well as a transit terminal and a vehicle maintenance and storage facility in Cochrane. Projects in the city include transit ways for the Southeast LRT and bus rapid transit service, a busway on the median of 17th Avenue SE and new LRT cars.
The total cost for all the projects is estimated at $300 million, with GreenTRIP covering two thirds of the cost and municipalities coming up with the remaining $100 million.
CRP chairman Truper McBride, who is also mayor of Cochrane, said the funding won’t put buses on the road this year, rather it will put communities on track to proceed with transit service in the coming years.
“This lays the foundation for regional transit,” he said.
McBride said the application will mean different things for different municipalities.
He said Cochrane’s portion of the request will cover most of what it will need to set up a transit service, including buses, a transit hub and a storage and maintenance facility. He said Airdrie is looking at adding more capacity to its existing service, while Canmore and Banff are looking at an intercity transit service.
McBride acknowledged money is tight for governments right now and he would understand if the Province pulled back on transit funding. However, he said the Province needs to play a larger role in transit because municipalities cannot afford to do so on their own.
“Transit in general is something the Province has not addressed for quite some time,” he said. “While right now we’re thankful they’re getting in the game with these capital dollars, sooner or later there will be an operation role for the Province.
“I know they’re not quite ready to go in that direction yet, but it really is an inevitability.”
Dawn Smith, Okotoks’ sustainability co-ordinator, said the CRP has a three-year transit plan and the application only includes a funding request for projects in the first year, which does not include anything in Okotoks.
She said Okotoks’ transit projects fall under the second and third year.
Smith said the Town is halfway through the first of two required transit feasibility studies and they need to be complete them before the Town can apply for funding.
“We don’t know what our system’s going to look like, whereas Cochrane had already done that a year prior,” she said.
Smith said Okotoks has started looking at potential locations for transit hubs and routes.
She said the Province has not announced the next application date for future rounds of funding, but once it does she said the Town’s will be looking for money to buy commuter buses and build a transit hub and it will be looking for funding for buses for an in-town transit service in the third year. This timeframe isn’t written in stone and council can chose to do more or less in one year, stressed Smith.
She wouldn’t say how long it will be before buses start rolling in Okotoks.
She said the Town first needs to complete the feasibility studies. As well, she said it will also depend on what type of bus the Town decides on and how long it will take to build and deliver them.
“If it was something like a double-decker, it would take at least a year because it takes a year for the manufacturers to make it,” she said.
