Halifax expanding fleet of accessible buses in ‘complement’ to transit upgrades

The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) is laying the groundwork for the replacement and expansion of its paratransit bus system.

Under its access-a-bus program, paratransit buses are a shared ride, door-to-door transit service for people who are otherwise unable to use the conventional transit system.

A tender posted on Nova Scotia’s Tender website Monday indicates that the municipality is exploring the purchase of “up to 40 paratransit buses.”

READ MORE: Transit improvement projects on the way for Halifax

According to the HRM, the city currently has 41 paratransit buses in their fleet.

Nick Ritcey, a spokesperson for the HRM, said that there is no definitive number on how many buses the city will purchase but that some of the vehicles purchased under the tender will replace older vehicles, while others will be used to expand the municipality’s services.

“We plan on adding 10 new busses over the next three years,” Ritcey said in an email, adding that there are currently 21 buses slated to be replaced in the same time period.

Ritcey said the move is not explicitly linked to Halifax Transit’s Moving Forward Together plan, which laid out improvements to the access-a-bus program.

“It certainly complements the overall strategy of improved service delivery,” he said.

“We’re expanding the fleet because demand for the service has increased in recent years. A bigger fleet is one of the ways we can better meet demand.”

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According to a report released earlier this year, access-a-bus is the only service offered by Halifax Transit that is seeing an increase in its ridership.

During the first quarter of 2017, ridership increased by one per cent and the number of people on the municipality’s waitlist decreased by 30 per cent.

The tender is set to close on Jan. 18, 2018.