Dear Pender Community Bus (Bussanova) supporters.
Moving Around Pender has been operating the Community Bus for the last 2 ½ years as a pilot project. The pilot project terminates at the end of this month (Dec 31st, 2018) and the MAP Bus Team has decided to stop the regularly scheduled bus service at least for a few months. The Bus will still be available for charters.
To find details on the pilot project you can access the detailed final report here.
The main reasons behind the decision are the lack of a sustainable financial model to run the bus and volunteer fatigue. The Bus was purchased with funds from CRD but the operations have been based largely on volunteer drivers and organizers and small grants and donations from community organizations, businesses and individuals. The Bus Team will now take a much deserved rest to thoroughly evaluate the statistics and seek feedback from the users and residents of Pender.
While the outcome hasn’t been fully determined at this time, we hope to resume limited service in the Spring with the potential to ramp up to 3 or 4 days/wk during the summer months as we have done for the last 2 years. However this resumption will be dependent on successful applications for funding currently being submitted and ultimately a more sustainable model of service delivery.
We would like to thank everyone that has supported the bus to date (there are too many to list here) and we hope that many of you will participate in our survey so that we can take those responses into account. Details about the survey will be available in the January Pender Post.
The Map Bus Team
Thanks