Bus in Kamloops/via Abby Zieverink

The wheels of the bus are turning as Kamloops City Council has given tentative approval to an ambitious plan to expand transit service starting next year.

They’ve only committed to pay for the first year of the plan – which is largely aimed at restoring service levels on a number of existing Kamloops bus routes – though there will also be expansions to service to include stat holidays.

“We also know that our demand is increasing. at the moment our month to month demand is anywhere from 120 per cent to 136 per cent of pre-COVID levels,” Transportation Manager Purvez Irani said.

“This means our strategic plan moving forward is quite important and significant to ensure that we meet on-time performance and other design guidelines.”

Tuesday’s vote meant that City Council has also agreed in principle to some of the more significant changes slated to happen in 2026 and 2027.

We’re committing to the first year expansion budget wise, and then in year 2 and year 3, what we are saying is basically yes, we agree in principle with where we should go with our Kamloops transit service,” Irani added.

Some of those new transit routes include a new express bus from Valleyview to TRU, a new bus in southwest Kamloops in the neighbourhoods of Lower and Upper Sahali, Aberdeen, Mount Dufferin, Southgate, and Thompson Rivers University, as well as new on-demand service to Kamloops Airport as part of a pilot project.

“Hopefully in our peak it will be 15 minute service, and non-peak would be 30 minute service,” Irani said of the new Valleyview express bus.

It will also include additional trips on the existing Route 10 North Shore Express bus to TRU.

“We are desperate for more transit. We hear it every single day,” Councillor Katie Neustaeter said. “It’s a core piece of our strategic plan, and so I just want to make sure that we acknowledge in gratitude that this is coming forward as an opportunity.”

Those future plans – which will have to go before City Council for final approval – are not guaranteed just yet, as the province needs to also put its its share of the money needed to cover the costs.

“BC Transit prepares a memorandum of understanding this time of year and what that asks the city to do is to commit the budgets for the 2025-26 fiscal year for BC Transit,” City of Kamloops Transportation Engineer Spencer Behn told Radio NL last week.

“Once we commit our budgets, [BC Transit] submits the funding request to the province and typically in early in the next year, so early 2025, we could get confirmation from the province that those funds would be approved.”

The three year-plan is expected to cost Kamloops taxpayers about $3.2 million, which will be spread out between the 2025, 2026, and 2027 city budgets.

“That is assuming that all years one, two, and three are approved and that would require additional MOU’s being signed in 2026 and 2027,” Behn added.