Loyalist volunteer ambassadors hope to smooth out transit experience for students

All buses in the transit system start at the transit terminal, where they branch out to the rest of the city before returning once their route is completed.. Photo by Jordan Mills, QNet News

By Jordan Mills

BELLEVILLE – Loyalist College has joined Belleville Transit to improve students’ experience using the bus to get to campus.

One initiative is the student transit ambassadors. These are volunteer students at the Belleville Bus Terminal for the first few weeks of this semester, helping students find the right bus. They will be able to provide assistance to students with bus schedules, bus routes, and payment. The ambassadors are on-site during peak rush hours, from 9 a.m. to noon and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Joe Reid, the general manager of transportation, said there were over 1 million users last year.

To understand just how many people use the system, on average, over 2,700 passengers a day use the system. About 10 buses are on the roads every day. Over the course of a day, on average, one bus would carry 270 passengers on its route.

With so many people using the system, it is important to keep users happy. Reid said the ambassador program helps.

“I think the program has achieved its goal,” Reid said. “I don’t believe it’s going to be there the entire semester. It’s just there to help with that first run of orientation. Students needing help navigating the system.”

Belleville transit hub is the central location of all the bus routes in the city. Photo by Jordan Mills, QNet News

Students are struggling with the transit system in the past, with cases of buses passing by students. This happens when the buses are already full.

This program is one way that the college and city hope to address the issue by getting students on the correct buses, he said..

There may be some more plans in the future, he added.

“We want to look at implementing a universal pass, along with the college, to allow for easier ridership for the students to use the transit system,” said Reid. “We have a consultant looking at a route review right now, so currently they are looking at the state of our system right now.”

The current transit system is a hub-and-spoke system, where all the buses start at the transit hub and branch out from that one central spot. Reid said it is looking at potentially moving to a grid-based system, where the routes would be north-south and east-west, and passengers would change buses at predetermined spots.

Belleville Transit has around 40 full-time drivers, three mechanics, and 18 buses in its fleet. At any given time, there are 10 buses running during the day, and the rest are kept as spares.

QNet News reached out to Loyalist College for comment on the ambassador program but was unable to get any comment.