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Penticton  

BC Transit expanding service between Penticton, Summerland

900 more bus hours coming

Public transit users looking to travel between Penticton and Summerland will soon have more options.

Starting in January, BC Transit will be adding 900 more hours of service on Route 30 which connects the two communities.

BC Transit sent out a postcard survey with both fill-in and QR code response options to Summerland residents asking where those 900 hours should be allotted, and over 200 responses came in.

"We had a resoundingly strong response to the option to introduce a new midday weekday trip, so between 12 and 1 p.m.-ish, and also brand new service on Saturdays, which currently does not have service. So that's a very strong response, 70 per cent of the respondents were in favour of that," said senior transit planner Adriana McMullen.

Details are soon to come, according to McMullen.

They are also in the midst of a pandemic-postponed "transit future action plan" process, hoping to have face-to-face interactions with community members this fall.

"The engagement for this plan will possibly be the first in-person open houses that BC Transit holds, following the pandemic," McMullen said.

"We understand that [the Summerland] community is very hard copy and paper driven. And although we have some really exciting new engagement platforms, there is a lot of value in trying to be there in person and be able to chat with the community members and understand what their needs are. So, our target is to be there for the week of November 22."

Feedback will be gathered on the transit needs for the community moving forward. McMullen said the in-person engagement is not guaranteed yet, given the changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they will do their best to make it happen.

"So fingers crossed it goes well, and we will have a chance to get out there, and it would be a pleasure for this to be one of the first places that we do get to go back and do in-person engagement," McMullen said.



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