During his State of Cochrane address at the RancheHouse on March 27, Mayor Jeff Genung took aim at critics of COLT (Cochrane On Demand Local Transit), but also highlighted significant improvements to the service expected in 2025.
The biggest improvement, said Genung, is that there will now be three fixed bus routes, creating a hybrid service where regular transit will be available in well-travelled areas of town and continued on-demand service in other locations.
“We did a lot of surveying,” said Genung, explaining how the fixed routes decision came about. “We did a lot of asking, and this is what people said: it needs to be reliable, it needs to be accessible, efficient– all of those things. So here is how we are responding in 2025– three new fixed routes.”
Genung acknowledged many users had been demanding this for years.
“Why didn’t you do that from the beginning? We didn’t know. We were testing. Transit was an experiment– it’s no longer an experiment. It’s a requirement in our community.”
Genung said the three new fixed routes will cover 80 per cent of the current COLT ridership, and were put together based on data compiled from the COLT app.
“The rest, the 20 per cent, are going to be continuing to be serviced by the on demand,” he explained. “So now we are going to have a hybrid system. Fixed routes like you would see in other communities … The rest of it all on demand.”
As for critics who feel COLT has been an unnecessary cost to the community, Genung said the ridership numbers tell a different story.
“Back in 2018, Cochrane had zero transit … Fast forward to 2025, and we have 78,000 rides (per year) booked on COLT. And that’s while taking criticism that ‘no one is ever on the bus’ — except 80,000 people are on the bus. And, ‘it’s not working.’ Well, it’s working for 80,000 people.”
Genung said COLT is only going to become more important to the community as Cochrane continues to grow at an accelerated pace.
“There is no sense in just applying a bus system for today,” said Genung, highlighting the importance of planning related to future urban transit in Cochrane. “We actually did the planning for the next five years. 230,000 rides are estimated to be on COLT by 2030– in five years. That’s an enormous amount of pressure being put on a system that didn’t exist in 2018.
“Zero to 230,000 trips in 12 years– incredible.”
