Bancroft Community Transit has some tricky navigating ahead, so to speak.
That from Gwen Coish, Director of Operations for the nonprofit which helps North Hastings residents who need rides to important appointments or to do day-to-day tasks.
Coish updated Bancroft council on Wednesday on some of the challenges ahead; including that the gas tax money it receives is not enough to support its growing number of customers.
In an interview, ahead of the council meeting, Coish said BCT will need to be creative in the way it manages programs. She expects BCT will continue to mesh its two main services together. That’s the public transit program it offers and a program that takes people to non-urgent medical appointments.
Often drivers find ways to fill multiple requests in one trip and Coish expects that will have to continue.
“Because we have all these different rides and all these different pieces of the puzzle, being able to put them all together into a system or a service that’s going to work for everyone is a challenge,” she says. “But it’s doable, as long as we work together. For sure, we need to be creative in how we operate. There can be no more waste.”
Another challenge ahead for BCT is a conversion to EVs. Coish says, by 2030, there’s a provincial expectation that public transit vehicles be electric, meaning BCT will soon have to change its fleet of vehicles.