New bus service offers rides from Tofino to Ucluelet, B.C.
West Coast Transit to provide bus service seven days a week and it will be free for students and kids under 12
A new bus has taken to the streets between Tofino and Ucluelet, much to the delight of western Vancouver Island residents.
The West Coast Transit is an interim transit service provided by the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District (ACRD) and will operate between the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ Government community of hitac̓u, Ucluelet, Tofino, and passes through the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation communities of Ty-Histanis and Esowista.
Eddie Kunderman, operations manager at the ACRD, said the service will be in place until the implementation of a long-awaited B.C. Transit-administered service – that's been indefinitely delayed due to a lack of provincial funding.
There were hopes a B.C. Transit service would start in 2020 or 2021, but challenges with the pandemic led the province to reallocate funds, he said.
"[The West Coast Transit] project has been in the making for a long time, probably 10 years or so," he said, adding life on the western-most coast of B.C. can feel isolating, given its lack of essential services.
"Whether it's the ability to go grocery shopping, to access health services, recreation opportunities, education … this service is looked at to help remove those barriers to provide transportation options for some of these remote areas."
The news was well received by youth in Tofino and Ucluelet, who look forward to making use of the bus to see friends, explore their communities and have a back-up transportation option when running late to school.
LISTEN | Students say the bus will be helpful:
"There was really minimal access for everyone that needed that outlet, but for youth especially, because we don't have the same freedoms as adults," Kailea Sked, 16, told CBC's All Points West.
"I've already started making plans for when I want to use it and for how I want to use it."
West Coast Transit will cost $5.50 to travel one-way, but will be entirely free for students and children. The bus will run seven days a week with service ending at 7 p.m. daily in hitac̓u.
Isolated without transit
Andrej Gluhovic, 18, said he couldn't believe it when he first heard of the bus.
"Towns are always like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, but then you never hear anything about it. So when I finally heard about it, I was, like, whoa," he said, adding he expects the service to be a hit among the younger generations.
"I would have killed for this before I was working to get my license."
While Tofino offers a free shuttle service in the summer months, Sked said access to Ucluelet or other nearby communities was otherwise limited.
She said the new service is important to help her connect with friends in other parts of western Vancouver Island.
"We already have a hard time with living on such a small island. But adding in the inability to go to and from … communities made it that much harder," she said, adding a lack of transportation makes it difficult for kids at the local high school to befriend peers in other communities.
"[When] you're so isolated and biased to your community … you become really negative and hostile toward anyone else and it makes it that much harder to make any more connections that can help you later on."
Currently, Ucluelet Secondary School is the only high school for kids in the regional district, according to Kunderman.
He said the bus has been well received and that many residents are pleased their travel expenses go down.
"Our first passenger of the day was someone who travels daily to work … and would need to take a water taxi every morning and then arrange transportation from the dock into the community," he said, adding that passenger said it cost them $50 a day to go to work.
He said the ACRD will continue to work with B.C. Transit to provide an expanded future service.
B.C. Transit said in a statement that it would provide information in the coming weeks on the possible approval of a new service that could potentially replace and expand upon the ACRD's independent service.
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With files from All Points West