Okotoks Transit continues to see steady ridership through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Passenger levels dropped off in March and April to about 30 per cent of the number of rides in previous months, but the transit system is still being used for essential travel by about 855 people last month, as well as a new arm of the service – grocery delivery.
The Town began providing delivery service to local grocery stores on March 27 and has been taking food to about 25 doors per day since.
“We just said let’s put a vehicle on the road for the day, let’s see what we can do,” said David Gardner, Okotoks transit specialist. “We ended up doing 35-odd orders on the first day for Sobeys.”
Gardner accompanied the driver for the first day of grocery delivery to get a feel for the service. Labelled bags were loaded into the bus by Sobeys employees, and then David and the Okotoks Transit driver delivered them to their list of addresses.
Once the bags were placed on the doorstep, they would ring the doorbell and step back a few metres to watch and ensure the customers received their purchases.
“Most of the people were seniors and they were all really appreciative, and we thought it made a lot of sense,” said Gardner.
He reached out to all of the larger grocery outlets in town, but No Frills and Safeway were not equipped to handle prepaid orders. Sobeys and Save-On Foods signed on right away, and Walmart may be taking up the delivery service soon as well. To-date, only Sobeys has been active, as most people pick up their own online orders at Save-On and Walmart, he said.
It took a few days to organize the logistics of grocery delivery, but he said the service has been going strong for over a month now with 764 total deliveries in April.
“It’s a healthy number for a small town like Okotoks,” said Gardner. “Those are all people who would have had to go to the store, so it really seems to be a win-win every direction, with keeping sick people home, keeping vulnerable people at home, reducing store numbers, and it hasn’t compromised our transit cost recovery model, either.”
That’s because the service isn’t provided for free. Each grocery store pays for the Okotoks Transit “rides,” but Gardner said they’re only charged the bulk rate, just like a passenger would if they chose to purchase a large number of tickets at once.
A single ride costs $2.75, but users can purchase 10 tickets for $24.75, 25 tickets for $58.44, 50 for $110, 75 tickets for $154.69 or 100 tickets for $192.50. Grocery stores are being charged the $1.92 per delivery rate, because by the end of the month they have booked bulk rides, said Gardner.
Providing grocery delivery has also allowed the Town to keep one more driver employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
The deliveries have helped Okotoks Transit keep up its goals for ridership in its first year. When the system rolled out in December 2019 the target was 1.6 passengers per hour, and before mid-March it was achieving nearly three passenger rides per hour.
“We’re doing three-and-a-half deliveries an hour on average,” said Gardner. “Effectively what we’re doing is just over three passengers per hour, except they’re not passengers, they’re groceries.”
Having the stores pay for delivery helps the bottom line, since traditional ridership declined by 60 per cent at the beginning of March, as the Province began announcing regulations to flatten the curve of COVID-19.
Gardner said it’s notable that people using transit before were largely taking a bus to visit friends, or get to or from a restaurant or pub. Eliminating those non-essential trips revealed how many people are using the service for essential travel, he said.
To accommodate those who need to use Okotoks Transit during the pandemic, some changes have been made for health and safety, he said. One of the most effective has been cutting down on ride-sharing.
“We were able to reduce the trip windows and that cut down on the shared ridership,” said Gardner. “Just by changing the parameters and algorithms for the passenger app we were able to reduce our passenger ride-share. That way we can use technology to control social distancing.”
He said the Town continues to remind residents to only travel if necessary, and that personal protective equipment (PPE) and social distancing are intended to be secondary measures in public. Those who do travel on transit are encouraged to wear a mask if possible.
Each vehicle is cleaned regularly and sanitized thoroughly three times per day, he said. In addition, drivers are separated from passengers by a plastic sheeting screen.
“Is there a possibility you will come into contact with somebody else in the vehicle? Yes, there is, as much as there is in going to a supermarket or a store,” said Gardner. “There are no guarantees, but we have done everything in our power to make public transit safe.”
He said if at any time someone books a ride and then feels their safety is at-risk if they board, they can receive a refund for their trip.
“I never want someone to be feeling like they don’t want to lose their money for their ride and taking the ride when they feel compromised in any way,” said Gardner.
Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca
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