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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
According to the most recent data, one per cent of Yellowknife residents are choosing to leave their cars and bikes at home and let city transit take them where they need to go; a statistic city officials want to increase in the coming year.

The City of Yellowknife's administrators are looking at ways to increase transit ridership levels. Rates of ridership are slowly increasing over the one per cent levels recorded in 2006. - Sara Wilson/NNSL photo

The city's transportation improvement study, completed this past year, focused its ambitious plan on collected data from a 2006 census report, which tracked Yellowknifers' transit activity, in an effort to provide more efficient services to residents.

The 2006 census revealed 68 per cent of residents commuted to work by car or truck, 24 per cent walked or cycled, one per cent used public transit, and seven per cent used other means of transportation such as taxis, ATVs or snowmobiles.

While vehicle use increased by 2 per cent over a 10 year period from 1996 to 2006, the model showed residents walking or cycling to work fell by 5 per cent.

Mayor Gord Van Tighem said ridership data will be collected again this fall.

"The transportation improvement study has been completed. It was part of the Smart Growth initiative," Van Tighem said. "Transit ridership is actually increasing but one of the reasons that the transit ridership seems to be at a constant is that, according to other statistics ... 25 per cent of our community walks or bikes to work."

Van Tighem did not provide specifics on how much ridership has risen.

Issues deterring commuters from utilizing public transportation, including colder weather, frequency of ride times, and location of bus stops are at the top of the list for city officials.

"They (buses) are pretty close to their schedules," Van Tighem said. "What we've been trying to encourage is putting little transmitters on the buses so you can track them on the Internet to see when they are coming up to your stop. The key thing at this point is to keep them running on schedule that is provided and people will gain confidence in the service."

In a press release sent out earlier this month, the City of Whitehorse announced an 18 per cent increase in its transit ridership, due to an overhaul of the system.

In 2010, the City of Whitehorse undertook extensive public consultation on its new loop-based transit system where the majority of participants said they favoured moving to the new system.

The new system now offers five routes that connect two separate neighbourhoods through the downtown core.

"After launching our new bus system in July we immediately saw an 18 per cent bump in ridership," said Deputy Mayor Florence Roberts stated in a press release. "Now that people have started into their fall schedules, we will be spending the next several weeks informing people about our new transit system."

Van Tighem said the city will be looking closely at Yellowknife's transit system in the coming year, when contracts for the city buses will be renewed.

"There will be a re-evaluation of the transit over the next year because the contract will be renewed next September," Tighem said. "Part of the contract renewal (process), there will be some significant changes to the transit coverage, not the least of which will be access to the Niven Lake subdivision."

While transit ridership levels may not be where officials would like them to be, the city-funded program isn't currently in danger of being dissolved.

Van Tighem said the city is collecting enough through the fare it charges to keep the service feasible at this point, and cited the example of Iqaluit having to cut its public transit service due to not bringing in enough money.

"We're not near that level yet," he said.

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