Belleville cuts transit service to Walmart entrance, Pioneer Building starting May 4

Open Council commentary

Can the City of Belleville | Municipal Government explain how removing the walmart stop is improving service efficiency and accommodate operational needs.

And, walking from that bus stop to walmart, for anyone with walking impairments, would be near impossible. Roughly over 200 metre walk. For a lot of riders, that seems like a ridiculous amount. Why not get rid of the stop thats not even listed, and keep the walmart stop?

At what point does the city even care that their choices are seriously inconvenient for those who do actually use the service? At what point, is the city going to stop making the lives of the people trying to utilize this service extremely difficult? Walmart has a large amount of employees that use the bus service to get to work and to go home from work. Lots of customers use it to shop. Why do we have to carry our heavy groceries across a large parking lot to that other stop? Why the hell can’t y’all figure out these things? You already don’t run this route on the half hour basis it used to run. There is only one bus that services this location and it isn’t ever going to be convenient to walk there from Bell Blvd because the city has never installed any sidewalks that provide real safety for anyone as a pedestrian. Y’all used to have a bus that went from Quinte Mall to Walmart which was great because you could prevent a trip downtown if you were already in the north end of town. You never consider how much time people have to waste on your transit to achieve errands. You think that adding extra walking time for people who are already struggling (in geared to income housing) somehow deserve less service close to where they live when they can’t afford an alternative option to get heavy items back to their homes. Your service has cancelations every, single, day. Sometimes you’re canceling evening service completely for an entire service area. And you also have the gall to increase prices with promised additional services that just get canceled constantly. This is NOT acceptable. $90 a month for a bus pass and NO ONE can count on your service running properly because it NEVER does. This is supposed to be a public service that removes transportation barriers for people who don’t drive and to help young people and people with less means to get around. It’s also supposed to provide an alternative to having too many cars on the road. Belleville is failing to provide a reliable service to its citizens, full stop.

Every single change youve made in the last 16 months hasnt improved any of the routes but made them worst. Thats after spending money to install those shelters…Why would you remove such an essential stop at Walmart BEFORE building the new one…How do you expect seniors and peope with disabilities to travel now all the way over there with groceries….You’ve also increased the bus fare and the bus pass more so then any other time in a 12 months span…This is with that big blue sign out front of terminal saying “we’ve invested 60 billion into public transit”. Who ever is running the public transit the last 2 years has been nothing cancerous to this community and some of the most of touch people around.

The place they are putting the new stop is more dangerous and a safety concern for seniors, the disabled and single mothers with children by essentially making them cross that very busy area. It doesn’t matter if there is a side walk there at all. We all know people will cross through the parking lot.

They created for themselves a major accessibility issue, and a potential health and safety issue. I wonder if they considered the legal implications to that if someone gets hit trying to run for the bus because they moved it.

Now, someone in a previous post had shown a google image of the parking lot. On the left hand side there was a bit of a circle where it was obvious cars could turn around. It’s a rarely used area, and if it’s expanded and made larger, that could actually be used for a new bus stop and it is in many ways a better option and much safer.

For one, transit users wouldn’t have to cross a busy parking lot. They would cross at the shorter side road that goes beside walmart. The City would have to put in a proper sidewalk and bus pad and shelter for the transit users. But they have plenty of available shelters after the removal of all the ones that were at previous stops they removed.

By enlarging that semi circle it will allow the bus to turn in there in a u-turn from the two way stop in from the store before turning into the parking lot. It would also mean, the bus doesn’t waste gas and mileage by having to go down Mineral Road to get back onto North Front Street.

I’m not sure what goes on in the Transit Committee’s heads but it’s time they brush up on their Accessibility Requirements when making decisions like these. These aren’t decisions that serve the needs of the Community. I’d like to see a full report on their decision making. Taking the obvious and easiest solution is not always in the best interest of all your citizens.

If they keep going the way they are, Belleville won’t have a transit any more.

And before you say that seniors and the disabled can take the Mobility Transit. Yeah… let me tell you about that. You have to book two weeks in advance to go any where in the afternoon. You can’t book for any where in the afternoon 24hrs in advance because you’re either not getting there, or you’re not getting home the same way. The drivers are great, but honestly, the service is terrible.

Transit in belleville used to be great. Not perfect. But they are killing it. Forcing people to other options. Carpooling and using delivery apps for groceries and costing these people business as customers go elsewhere.

If anybody gets injured walking through Wallymart parking lot because of this, they should sue Belleville Transit