Despite some concerns from area business, council will be asked to make city hall the permanent south-side transit hub Monday.
In 2010, city administration selected city hall as the best location for the city’s south-side transit hub.
During a 2015 committee of a whole meeting a corporate report recommended city hall, which was being used as a temporary transit hub, become a permanent solution.
Council sent that report back and requested administration complete a stakeholder consultation in the area.
In November, administration held individual consultation meetings resulting in 59 responses from public information sessions and online forums.
“Surprisingly we’ve been able to see that from the public side there is support to keep it there,” said Transit Division Manager Brad Loroff. “Approximately 70 per cent of what we heard was positive things from a passenger’s perspective.”
Loroff added that city hall provides an abundant of safety and security perspectives for passengers connecting buses.
“City hall is a well-lit area, it’s an open area and it offers a lot of natural surveillance characteristics,” he said.
“These are the types of things we are looking for when we looking at maintaining something like a transit hub anywhere in the city.”
Despite the positive outlooks from transit passengers, some surrounding business owners had different opinions.
Many opponents believed the plan would lead to safety issues around city hall.
Gil Labine partner at Atwood Labine LLP said the firm has major worries concerning the transit hub being permanently located at city hall.
“We think it’s an absolute horrendous mistake for the city to approve the bus depot being put in front of city hall for a number of reasons,” Labine said.
Labine believes the big concern is for security and safety in that area, “putting four or five buses on that road creates hazards with respect to traffic and pedestrian travel it’s not designed for bus traffic or at least not that many buses.”
The report also pushes for better accessibility, providing improved passenger amenities and enhancing communication by installing electronic passenger information.
The report will be discussed during the next council meeting at city hall Monday.
