With a commitment to include feedback from Transit users on future improvements moving forward, the cityLINK Transit system will remain in Lethbridge.
Lethbridge City Council voted 7-2 on Tuesday for the cityLINK Transit system to continue – with quarterly adjustments being made to reflect feedback, changing travel patterns and metric indicators. As part of the resolution, Council also voted to refer the proposed funding components to the Operating Budget deliberations in November.
Included in these adjustments are improvements scheduled for launch on May 4, which will include new on demand service to Lethbridge Airport, some modifications to westside routes, as well as expanded services in the Lakeview area.
"The core outcome of the cityLINK project is to provide the best transit system to the greatest number of people within our Operating Budget," says Acting Mayor Belinda Crowson, who is also Chair of Civic Works SPC, which authored the Council recommendations. "Although this network will be constantly improving, initial results indicate that the impact to our customers has been net positive, based upon increased usage."
"Performance metrics for the cityLINK system are overwhelmingly positive and indicate that this network is substantially outperforming the previous network in all four industry standard performance metrics – those being on-time performance, ridership, transfer ratio and efficiency," says Timothy Sanderson, General Manager of Transit. "Feedback received from this network redesign has been mostly concern-based, which is expected with a complete system change. Where we can, we've used that feedback to improve processes and, the vast majority of these concerns have been addressed or will be addressed with improvements scheduled for May."
On May 4, Lethbridge Transit will be implementing these cityLINK route changes and additions:
- Demand Response Zone 103 will service the Lethbridge Airport and Prairie Arbour Estates. Demand Response Zone 103 will now end at 20 Avenue South
- Extensions of the Gold Line and Blue Line will replace the Purple Line. The Gold Line will expand to cover north end of the previous Purple Line. The Blue Line will expand to cover south end of the previous Purple Line
- 3 Green route will deviate off Mayor Magrath Drive onto 9 Avenue and 10 Avenue South for service to Chinook Regional Hospital
- 4 Orange route has been expanded to service the Lakeview area
- Demand Response Zone 104 will include the North station as a pickup/drop off location
The cityLINK network was launched in August 2021 to improve efficiency and effectiveness. More background is available here.
For residents looking to plan their new route, information is available online at www.Lethbridge.ca/transit or on the myRide app available in the Apple and Google app stores.
