Editor's Note: This story was previously posted on StratfordToday.ca.
Perth County announced last week that the PC Connect transit pilot project, better known as Rural Route, will be coming to an end in March 2025 when the funding for the project ends. And while they added that the remaining service will not be impacted by this decision, that will only be protected for the rest of 2025.
The press release issued by Perth County specifically stated that PC Connect Routes 1,2 and 3 (routes that connect London, Stratford, St. Marys, Listowel and Kitchener-Waterloo) will not end in March, but officials in both Stratford and St. Marys said that anything past the end of the next calendar year will become a budget item and remains up for discussion.
“There is a three-way partnership between ourselves, St. Marys and North Perth, which means at this time the routes are stable,” Stratford Mayor Martin Ritsma said. “I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do for the next budget cycle, and certainly the ridership goes beyond stable as I would call it exceptional.”
Ritsma said the city contributed $590,000 to the program in 2024, while St. Marys and North Perth both ponied up $160,000. He wouldn’t comment on anything beyond this year’s tax cycle, and added that future decisions on this program would be independent choices each community has to make on how they want to see their tax dollars spent.
“I know that in talking with the provincial government, that envelope of money that we originally tapped into isn’t there but they have indicated in our last conversation that there’ll be other envelopes of money, grant dollars that we can tap into to maintain this,” he said. “From our perspective, other municipalities are going to sort through what they can afford on their budget and that’ll be a conversation as well around our budget table.”
Brett Kitmer, the chief administrative officer for the Town of St. Marys, said the town has found itself in a favourable financial position over the last few years and the ridership numbers have been better than what was expected. That said, it’s going to need to be reviewed once the provincial funding officially comes to an end in March next year.
“We’ve had preliminary discussions that if we don’t receive any provincial funding for 2026 and beyond, it’s very unlikely that we’re going to be able to deliver the service,” Kittmer said. “The project is heavily subsidized through that grant funding from the province, and the concern we have is that the province has issued in their most recent budget … that they’ve committed $5 million a year to rural transit projects but from what we can tell the guidelines only apply to new and startup projects. Anything currently in operation won’t get any of that funding, so we don’t think we’ll qualify, which honestly is too bad because it’s kind of a strange situation: we were forced to launch the program during COVID when we knew ridership was going to be low, but we’ve been seeing the numbers go up and up. We think our project would fit provincial goals pretty well, but they don’t seem to want to support the projects that are being successful.”
Kittmer said there was no way currently to quantify the financial impact PC Connect has had on St. Marys, and that keeping the project going past the end of next year without significant help from the province would most likely be prohibitive.
“The province committed to helping us launch and then with the hope that we’ve become sustainable in the future, I guess that thought process is slightly flawed because it’s always going to be extremely expensive to operate it,” he said. “Unless we put the fares up at least three or four times what they are now, we couldn’t afford it. And with a cost like that, it wouldn’t make sense for people to pay for those fares when the cost now is affordable ($12 for adults, $10 for seniors or students).”
Coun. Mark Hunter, the chair of Stratford’s finance and labour relations committee (which oversees the city’s budget process), acknowledged it was always going to be challenging to maintain the service should the provincial funding dry up.
“Even at the recent, higher levels of ridership, the average cost is still approximately $35 per ride, yet the price charged to users ranges from free to $6 per ride,” he said, speaking of the part of the program being cut in 2025. “I can’t speak for the rest of council, but I would struggle to support this.”
Wanting to maintain the service would be a significant dent in the city’s tax levy, as Hunter said it would equate to about $300,000 per year for Stratford. Removing the county from that equation would mean the price tag goes up, and not by a small amount.
“The total cost of the service is $750,000 per year at the current service level, and if we were to fund this alone our taxes would have to rise by a further one per cent,” he said. “The impact of not continuing the service is that the current users would have to find alternatives. Since the PC Connect service started, a private company (Onex) started offering bus service between communities, which might be a viable alternative.”
Ritsma agreed that without provincial dollars, funding the program past the end of 2025 would be questionable.
“For this to be borne by user fees only and paid for by the ridership, I think that would put it as untenable because I don’t think the current riders could carry the entire cost,” he said. “We believe that if the province continues to come to the table and see value in it, each municipality would see value in it. But without provincial dollars, I can’t see the present format existing. I don’t know if it could be pared down, but user fees would still be quite expensive.”
