Mayor Phil Schaefer says a rural transit program is very hard to pull off in a small municipality like East Zorra-Tavistock.
EZT - The Township of East Zorra-Tavistock will not be moving forward with EZTransit.
Mayor Phil Schaefer says the transit pilot project will be permanently discontinued as of Friday September 27th.
"We estimate it's about $100,000 per year to run that service and that's before we buy another one or two buses which we would ultimately need to do. We just decided to cancel it because we could not see burdening the taxpayers with an ever increasing amount of cost like that."
It started in January of this year and it had a paratransit bus take people to Hickson, Tavistock, Innerkip, Woodstock, and Stratford on two different routes. The bus was able to carry up to 10 people and three wheelchairs and it hit the roads in the early mornings, afternoons, and early evenings.
With the tickets costing $5 per ride, Mayor Schaefer says they would need 100 riders per day to come close to covering the cost. He says it just isn't in the cards for the Township.
"There may be a model out there for rural transit but to have a small municipality run it on their own like this, we tried but we found that financially it's very hard to do."
Mayor Schaefer adds that gas tax funding for transit services is only available to municipalities with a population over 30,000.
With all of this being said, Mayor Schaefer says EZTransit was great while it lasted.
"I have no regrets about doing this pilot project. My only regret is the people who counted on it and won't be able to use it anymore, I do feel bad for them but unfortunately, we had to make a tough decision."
After this Friday, the Township says any unused EZTransit tickets will be fully refunded at the Township's administration building.
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