Students at Lakehead University were heartened when, after much lobbying, the City of Orillia added a sixth bus route to help ease the transportation crunch at the west Orillia campus.
“In January, when the city added a second route, it was a benefit to students,” said Theresa Vande Burgt, vice president of the Lakehead Student Union (LUSU). “Having two routes rather than one meant buses arrived on time more often and were on schedule.”
However, it was far from perfect.
The original Georgian route bus travels down University Avenue, enters the Lakehead campus to drop off and pick up students in front of the library every half hour. But the new route, the Old Barrie Road route, turned off Old Barrie Road and stopped, on University Avenue, directly opposite the school’s main entrance.
“That route doesn’t come into the university and there’s no crosswalk there, so what we were seeing was students playing chicken, attempting to run across five lanes of traffic, which wasn’t safe,” said Vande Burgt.
Then, the stop was relocated to the stoplight at the main entrance to Costco. “The stop was removed suddenly and without notice to university or to students, so it was a huge problem because students were still waiting at the stop and wondering why the bus wasn’t picking them up,” she said. She also said it was much further from the school and more inconvenient.
But Jeff Hunter, the city’s manager of construction and transit, said the bus stop was moved at the request of the university. He said the city received a letter from Dr. Dean Jobin-Bevans, the Principal of the Orillia campus, requesting the move in February.
“We looked into it, took it seriously, had our traffic staff out and they had a look at it and we agreed: We don’t want people crossing a five-lane road, so to mitigate any potential risk, we moved the stop to the closest signalized stop at Costco, which is about 280 metres down the road,” said Hunter.
He noted the city sent a letter informing the university of the decision March 22. The stop was not physically moved until early April.
Vande Burgt said students would prefer to see the bus, like the other route, come into the campus to pick up and drop off students.
Hunter said while that may be ideal for students, it would cause problems elsewhere. He said for the Old Barrie Route bus to go into campus, that means a left turn off of University, a slow trip down Lakehead’s long and meandering driveway, followed by a left-turn upon its exit from the school.
“The bottom line is we can’t go in there and stay on schedule,” said Hunter. “People say, ‘What’s the big deal. It’s just a couple of minutes.’ The buses have to be at the downtown terminal at the same time, so people can get off and transfer to another bus. If this bus is late, it throws it all off.”
He said despite the angst over the location of the stop, the addition of the sixth route has been successful. He said buses, generally, are now on time and on schedule regularly.
“The whole intent was it shortened up the Georgian route and gave us much more capacity because we have twice as many buses on those routes,” said Hunter. “Those routes were chronically behind schedule and now they’re on schedule. It really is working.”
Lakehead students believe it could work better. LUSU conducted a survey of its students to obtain data it can use in its negotiations with the city, which are ongoing.
Vande Burgt said about 300 students responded to the survey. She said results show most students use their bus pass, about 30% use it five days a week and almost 100% of respondents use the new route because they live in West Ridge.
And while not every student uses Orillia Transit, every one does pay for what’s called a UPass as part of their student fees. “Right now, all of our students pay $114 for their UPass and we have over 1,000 students, so that’s a huge contribution we make.”
She said the stop at Costco creates accessibility issues for some students and will be difficult for many during the winter.
“My main concern is winter time, when the weather is not great, having to walk down a sidewalk that is often uncleared to get to that stop ... it’s not good for our students and it’s also not accessible,” she said, noting six of eighth months of the school year can feature inclement weather.
She plans to bring her concerns to the city’s transit advisory committee.
“LUSU is an organization that advocates for all of its students," Vande Burgt told OrilliaMatters. “Our role is to ensure students’ concerns are brought to the forefront. We are trying to figure out what can be done with the negotiations that is best for transit and best for us. Because we are such a large contributor, it would just make sense that their service is suitable to students.”
Hunter is hopeful of continued improvements across the system. “They’re a big user,” he said of Lakehead students, “but all our residents are equal.”
However, he said concerns such as these will be addressed through a transportation master plan happening this year. “We will review and investigate and address issues and this is one of them,” he said, noting cross-walks will be further contemplated even though traffic counts did not warrant them recently.
