Kingston Transit limits seating, asks residents to ride the bus for ‘essential trips’ only

The city has announced it will be limiting seating to a maximum of 15 passengers on their public transit buses and are asking residents to use transit for “essential trips only.”

This comes just a day after the city declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this week, Kingston Transit decided to reduce service on almost all its lines to Sunday schedules with the following exceptions:

• All express routes will be reduced to 60-minute service frequency and will operate from approximately 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Route 7 will be reduced to 60-minute service frequency and will operate from approximately 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Routes 1 and 15 will reduce service to operate from approximately 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Routes 17, 18 and 18Q will be suspended.

The city also added a shuttle that offered direct service from the Centre 70 park and ride to Kingston General Hospital from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day of the week to accomodate health care workers trying to get downtown.

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Those changes came into effect Thursday.

On Friday, the city announced they would be marking certain seats as “unavailable” on all buses still running in order to allow riders to practice social distancing.

The city is also urging residents to only use transit for trips they deem essential.

“Kingston Transit will make every effort to deploy additional buses when capacity has been reached, but unfortunately this will not always be possible. Passengers should be prepared to wait for the next scheduled bus, should capacity be reached,” the city said in a new release sent out Friday afternoon.

To ensure seats remain available to those who truly need them, we ask riders to use Kingston Transit for essential trips only. Capacity will remain limited and further changes are possible.

The city continues to ask people to board the bus from the back entrance to protect their drivers from the disease.