PRINCE ALBERT — The City of Prince Albert is expanding transit services to The Yard district in the New Year.
The All-Day Express Bus will offer transportation to The Yard and the Lake Country Co-op Leisure Centre Monday through Saturday, according to a City of Prince Albert press release sent out on Friday.
Evan Hastings, Capital Projects Manager for the City of Prince Albert, said they expanded service to the Yard because it is rapidly expanding.
"We have the new Co-op Leisure Center opening there in the early parts of 2025, hopefully. We have many other businesses that are well under development or already in place there, so the natural movement would be to expand transit there so people can get to work, (and) get the programming (like) swim lessons when they eventually open and stuff like that,” Hastings said.
Hastings said the expansion of the All-Day Express route ensures regular daily transportation to The Yard district for families, students, and professionals. The expanded route will stop in The Yard every half hour Monday through Saturday. This expanded route is being offered in addition to the Core Express, which offers transportation to The Yard on weekdays.
"The idea was to expand the All-Day Express so that people can get to work, professionals can go where they need to go. You can go there to get a burger. You can go there for city programming, anything like that. That's really the big move, and that's what's being expanded on Thursday, Jan. 2,” Hastings explained.
The All-Day Express bus offers transit service at several stops in downtown Prince Albert and along Sixth Avenue West, Marquis Road, Sixth Avenue East, and 15th Street East. This route continues to see increased ridership and currently averages just over 1,600 riders per week.
Information about transit times and locations is available by visiting the City of Prince Albert online.
Additionally, the City also announced that the transit route to Little Red River Park is being discontinued at the end of December.
"With the expansion in certain areas of the city, there's new businesses (and) new growth that has to be supported,” Hastings explained. “The trial (to Little Red) is no longer underway. That's concluding right now. (That) doesn't mean it'll be done forever. It just means that the trial that was ran this year didn't garner the results that we think this new expansion will.”
Hastings added that the City is working with partners to explore ways to support access to Little Red River Park for those without transport. He said the route was great for Little Red, but was hampered by only serving one location.
The expansion to The Yard, he said, is part of a bigger route.
"It's a lot easier to support the ridership,” Hastings said. “Like we said, it doesn’t mean the Little Red route is done or anything like that. It's just that it was operating each Saturday and that's just not going to happen moving forward.”
The last day for the Little Red River Park transit route was Dec. 28.
As well the City is offering ‘Ride free for NYE’ by taking the free public transit offered from 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, until 3:15 a.m. Jan. 1, 2025. This annual initiative is once again funded through SGI and encourages everyone to plan a safe ride home.
For those needing accessible transportation, they can call the Special Needs Transportation Dispatch at the Community Service Centre at (306) 953-4460.
“So each and every year, our partners at SGI, they offer really good program throughout Saskatchewan and they allow the cities basically to operate free transit until 3:15 AM in the city of Prince Albert,” Hastings said.
"So they fully fund us to run our transit from 7:15 PM to 3:15 AM. So everybody can get to where they need to go for New Year's Eve, and they can get home safe, and that's courtesy of SGI,”
This year there are six routes that will service the City and all routes will meet at the downtown Central Transit Transfer Station, including the Rush Hour, All-Day Express, West Hill, East Hill, East Flat, and West Flat. All routes will operate every half hour from 6:45 a.m. on December 31 to 3:15 a.m. on January 1.
The bus routes are the same as daytime routes. The City would also like to encourage New Year’s riders to check out www.transitlivepa.com. This tool allows users to track buses in real-time online so they can better plan their departure times and limit time spent in the cold at the bus stop.
The “Ride Free for NYE” Program started in Prince Albert in 1989 and has provided over 10,000 safe and free rides home.
Overall Hastings explained that transit in Prince Albert is moving in a positive direction.
"The ridership has been increasing. We're having more and more people being able to get where they need to go in the city. We have massive growth here on the horizon and we're working to make sure that our transit network can support that. So we see a positive vision, positive growth and it is a really good news story for sure,” Hastings said.
