BANFF – Ridership on local Roam routes in Banff was down three per cent this year from 2023 but up 45 per cent from 2019.
The ridership numbers on routes 1 (Sulphur Mountain), 2 (Tunnel Mountain) and 4 (Cave and Basin) for July and August were 434,894, down from 447,846 last summer; however, they were significantly up from 300,479 in 2019 – the baseline pre-COVID-19 pandemic year used by the the Town of Banff in its traffic data.
Town of Banff officials say Roam was facing some challenges this year, operating with a shortage of buses – four fewer than last year – which may have contributed to the drop in transit ridership.
Adrian Field, director of engineering for the Town of Banff, said two minibuses were used to compensate for the decrease in capacity, using flexible schedules on routes that needed more capacity throughout the day.
“They kind of shadowed the existing buses so they weren’t scheduled per se, but they did follow the buses and picked up the overloaded passengers, so for folks that couldn’t get on a bus,” he said.
The buses were out of service due to the Proterra bankruptcy proceedings, which ended in a sale to Phoenix Motorcars Inc. earlier this year.
Field said the municipality hopes the ridership can recover to at least the same as 2023 next year once the Proterra issue is finalized.
“We really hope the Proterra issue will be resolved by next summer and we’ll have those buses back on the road again,” he said.
“I know our fleet team are working super hard to get those back up to full speed.”
Field said there will also be three new buses next year on top of the existing fleet.
“The hope would be more buses will induce more riders, but also fill in the gaps where we did still have overloads,” he said.
“Our hope will be to get to 15-minute frequency service next year and, if precedent is anything to go by, then that should dramatically increase our ridership next year, certainly on the Roam local system.”
As for regional route 3 between Banff and Canmore, ridership was similar to last year and up 60 per cent from 2019.
On-it Calgary ridership dramatically decreased 29 per cent from 2023, although is still up 30 per cent from 2019.
Sarah O’Leary, transportation data analyst for the Town of Banff, said ridership has been offset slightly by a new On-It route direct to Lake Louise this year.
“Increasing service hours and capacity could be methods to help improve ridership increases, but these would need to be of a significant scale in order to have a meaningful impact on vehicle volumes,” she said.
Mayor Corrie DiManno said she hopes Parks Canada and the province of Alberta step forward to support mass transit from Calgary with daily, convenient and affordable services.
"We could start by expanding On-It to every day in summer and this bus service could provide proof of concept if passenger rail gets support in the future,” she said.
