Thu, January 22, 2009
Ridership on a bus
from Lucan to
By DEBORA VAN
BRENK
LUCAN -- It's dark, snow-swept and bitingly cold as Jan
Berman slaps ice off the bus windshield with a towel-wrapped broom.
She circle-checks the bus, then buckles herself in and
wrestles the vehicle into gear.
Plows aren't on the streets yet, so Berman wends her way
through Lucan more by memory than by sight or feel.
She cheerfully greets each passenger by name at every
stop: those who climb aboard outside a church; the briefcase-burdened woman who
embarks at the end of her driveway; and the last, coffee-clutching pair at Tim
Hortons.
Then the Murphy's Bus Lines bus rumbles through the
darkness, into
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At 4:30 p.m., Berman and her passengers head back.
She has followed this routine -- Lucan to
For years, a group of
The L2L (Lucan to
- First, it works only if enough people, from roughly
the same place, are heading in the same general direction.
- They all have to work around standard office hours.
- And for passengers and bus operators alike, it has to
prove itself to be a better option -- financially and logistically -- than
single-vehicle driving.
For London Life manager Ken Holland, a 25-year veteran
of the "daily," it all fits.
"It's just a convenient, inexpensive way to get to
work," he says.
He saves more than $4,000 a year on car insurance, gas
and vehicle wear-and-tear, even after paying the $10 cost of a round trip
(which, he notes, is about the same as a day's parking fee downtown).
Most importantly, he gets to hand to Berman the stress
of navigating bad roads, bad drivers and bad weather
Likewise for Guilda Ziler, who dispatches roadside
assistance from DAA offices in downtown
She sees the irony in taking a bus to a job where she
fields phone calls from stuck motorists. "It's going to be a busy day," she says
as she gazes out the bus window at cars crawling through the squalls. "They're
usually by themselves in this type of weather."
Ziler has been catching a lift on the commuter since
last spring. "I'm a Lucanite," she says. This bus allows her to live where she
wants and work where she can.
But it's hardly a cash cow for the bus line, whose core
business is school bus runs and charters.
It helps that the vehicle and Berman sometimes double up
for student transportation after the commuter run, and that some of Murphy's
drivers often need a lift to other bus yards.
It's a service Murphy's would hate to give up,
vice-president Rob Murphy says.
"We've always felt that the ones that have used it for
years, it would be difficult to discontinue it."
A few years ago though, when regular ridership dropped
to five, that seemed inevitable.
Gas was cheaper, employment was high and people found it
inexpensive and easy to drive to and from
Berman figured awareness was part of the problem.
"I put a bug in a few people's ears and we put out
flyers," she says. "About that time, the economy went (down)," she says, her
hands spiralling towards the floor, "and gas prices went (up)."
Ridership now sits at about 20 regulars -- still far
from a full bus -- and is growing.
For today's riders, the L2L may be a no-brainer, but
others aren't convinced. Murphy says the company surveyed residents of nearby
Ilderton about a possible route expansion.
No go.
People are still driven by their car obsessions, Murphy
says. People are used to driving, mostly solo, wherever they want or need to be.