The City of Kamloops will be adding 4,500 hours of service to BC Transit over the next two years.

That will include adding 1,500 hours in the final four months of this year, and another 3,000 hours in the first eight months of 2022. This expansion was proposed last year, but was deferred in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayor Ken Christian says the city needs to put more horsepower into its transit system, saying the pandemic has impacted it in two ways.

“One is that there are fewer people needing transit, vis-a-vis the students as well as some of the workers, but also there’s an inherent fear now that we’ve instilled in the population about public conveyances and infectious disease. And I think as we look to rebuild our transit ridership, we need to be bold,” Christian says.

“I’ve been researching free transit in terms of what we could use as a catalyst to start that rebuilding, and another bold move, but that would be down the road.”

In 2019, before the pandemic, Kamloops saw a record 3.6 million rides on its transit system. Last year, there were 1.94 million rides.

“Things may look very different by spring, summer and fall this year. We know this pandemic is not going to be lasting forever,” councillor Kathy Sinclair says.

“And we know we want to increase the attractiveness of taking transit, and the only way to do that is to expand our service hours and potentially expand our routes, according to the transit future action plan.”

The added hours will cost taxpayers $82,570 in this year’s budget, and $165,130 in 2022.