Belleville’s Transit Advisory Committee has discussed feedback from riders and social media about the new transit routes.
During Tuesday’s Transit Operations Advisory Committee meeting, the committee discussed a recent social media petition, calling for recent changes to the city’s bus lines to be reverted.
Despite the petition, Belleville Transit is finding that in direct feedback from riders, the new routes are proving very popular.
Councillor Kathryn Brown, chair of the committee, said that some of the negative social media buzz comes from misinformation about the changes that were made.
“The misinformation began before we’d actually formally been communicating the implementation plan and what was going to happen,” said Councillor Brown. “A good example being that it was based on COVID ridership numbers, when in reality, it was based on pre-pandemic and post-pandemic ridership numbers.”
While the petition claims the changes were made without passenger feedback, Brown says there were public information sessions, and rider questionnaires distributed on board the buses in order to understand the public’s needs. At the same time, they also made use of rider data to determine what routes saw overcrowded buses and which ones were underused.
The new routes were designed to allow more frequent service. While most routes before the change saw a bus once an hour, now buses are arriving at many stops every half hour, with select routes even offering service in both directions.
Councillor Brown is encouraging anyone with questions or concerns to contact Belleville Transit so they can provide them accurate information and use their feedback to keep improving the service.
“All that kind of feedback that we’re getting will help us to create what I would call a heat map where the calls are,” said Councillor Brown. “Is it is it just random throughout the city, or is there a specific area that’s suddenly popping up where we seem to be getting a lot of concerns, and we need to look at that one much more closely.”
At the time of writing, the change.org petition has 645 signatures, with a goal of 1000.
Belleville Transit bus parked at the downtown terminal station. (Photo: City of Belleville)
