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Senior management from BC Transit will be making a presentation to the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) on Thursday detailing its goal to establish regular bus service between Penticton and Kelowna.
Rob Williams, senior regional transit manager, and Matthew Boyd, manager of planning, are scheduled to propose a Memorandum of Understanding for the development of plan to provide daily bus service between Penticton and Kelowna.
A Penticton-Kelowna service connecting the South Okanagan-Similkameen to the Central Okanagan was identified as “top priority” in the RDOS’ Transit Future Plan from 2015.
The proposed service would include two round trips each weekday - one during peak morning hours and one during peak evening hours - and would connect riders from Penticton and Summerland to communities in the Central Okanagan, including Kelowna.
The service would be integrated with existing transit services that are currently being provided in the RDOS.
The only bus service now being offered between Penticton and Kelowna is one return trip on Mondays.
BC Transit has set goals to complete the service development plan that outlines overall project details and timelines before the end of this spring, confirm local funding and governance during late spring and the summer of 2018 and have a signed Transit Improvement Program MOU by June.
A completed service change plan with all details, including bus stops, routing, schedules and integration with existing RDOS bus service, would be completed by late summer or early fall and citizens from various communities would be engaged for their input during the falls months.
The implementation of the new transit service plan would begin in September of 2019, according to BC Transit.
Public engagement would include open houses and an online survey and will help refine the final service design.
“Public transit services between Penticton to Kelowna was identified as a priority within the 2015 Okanagan-Similkameen Transit Future Plan,” says a BC Transit report that has been presented to the RDOS board in advance of Thursday’s presentation. “Recent discussions among senior officials as part of the Transit Working Group have indicated an appetite for implementing the Penticton-Kelowna expansion in the near future.
“Given that a Penticton-Kelowna transit service will benefit constituents outside of the RDOS boundary, namely residents of Peachland and West Kelowna, the working group has already engaged with potential external partners to explore sharing funding arrangements with these partners, In the event that the RDOS secures partial funding from these partners towards the transit service, the total RDOS contribution will decrease.”
BC Transit management will also detail projected costs for the various partner municipalities and electoral areas during Thursday’s presentation.
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