City Council rejects transit service reduction
Thunder Bay’s city council has voted against a plan to reduce the frequency of city buses over the summer.
For months, transit riders have experienced increased route cancellations thanks to a shortage of bus drivers.
Over multiple city council meetings, staff from Thunder Bay Transit have explained how the service has struggled with high staff turnover: while the transit service hired 22 new employees this year, it also lost 22 — far more than the average of about 12 employees per year.
At a previous meeting, transit workers described a situation of low morale among workers.
With such difficulty in filling driver’s seats, the service cannot address a deeper absenteeism issue.
Out of 131 operators (both full and part-time), just 79 are projected to be available to work this summer.
Manager of Transit Services Brad Loroff painted a dire situation at Tuesday’s council meeting: in 2025, the transit service’s delivery of bus trips dropped from a target of 99 per cent to just 96 per cent.
“While 96 per cent may appear high, that remaining 4 per cent represents a significant number of cancelled runs each day,” Loroff explained.
The city projects that if nothing changes, with projected staffing issues continuing, the delivery rate of trips could drop to 92 per cent this summer.
With the cancellations looming, the city proposed a reduced transit schedule for the summer that would see the city run its buses at the less frequent off-peak rates, even during peak hours.
At the revised rates, buses that normally arrive every 15 or 30 minutes would instead arrive every 22 or 45 minutes from May 10 to August 22.
Councillor Albert Aiello, who supported the city’s plan, agreed that less frequent buses are preferable to surprise cancellations, saying “it’s better that you know that there is no bus and you make alternate arrangements, than you sitting at the bus stop, and then you’re late to work or to doctor’s appointments, or to run various errands.”
Other councillors who supported the plan argued that reliability was more important than frequency of rides.
“Without that consistency, we might as well not even have a service at all,” said Councillor Kasey Etreni. “Riders need to be able to plan their day, and they need that reliable schedule, and the operators need a system that doesn’t set them up for failure.”
But the majority of city councillors opposed the reduced schedule.
Councillor Shelby Ch’ng was sympathetic, but worried that the plan would cause too much strain on transit riders and fail to address the root cause of absenteeism.
“People are missing appointments, not going to work, missing exams… I just don’t feel that this is in the best interest of the people who depend on the bus,” she said.
Ultimately City Council voted 7-4 in opposition to the plan for a reduced summer transit schedule.
Councillors Kasey Etreni, Albert Aiello and Brian Hamilton, and Mayor Ken Boshcoff voted in support of the reduced schedule.
Councillors Rajni Agarwal, Mark Bentz, Shelby Ch’ng, Andrew Foulds, Greg Johnsen, Dominic Pasqualino, and Michael Zussino voted in opposition to the reduced schedule.
Councillors Trevor Giertuga and Kristen Oliver were absent from the vote.
