WELLINGTON COUNTY – The County of Wellington's Economic Development Committee is revisiting RIDE WELL's mission statement in the hopes they can improve future ridership levels.
A report previously recommended the committee choose between prioritizing providing accessible and direct trips to all residents or providing a service with the potential for high demand that requires passengers to travel to a fixed point.
Instead, councillors opted to "do nothing until we know where we're going" after they couldn't agree on the program's intention and said they needed to settle on a goal before they made their recommendations.
However, according to CAO Scott Wilson, RIDE WELL was originally introduced as a way for people to get to work as ridesharing services like Uber weren't available.
Of the just over 1,500 residents surveyed, the report said only 2.68 per cent use RIDE WELL to get around the community and of those, 18.84 per cent use the service to get to work.
Thirty-five per cent of respondents indicated that the biggest transportation gap in the county is the general lack of transportation services like taxis or buses and 68 per cent indicated they would use a rural public transit service.
Staff will return with a report in May outlining the program and what gaps currently exist to inform their decision.
The committee also suggested the new grant funds be directed toward paying for existing enhancements rather than taking on additional costs and generating higher costs down the line.
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.
