New bus shelters coming to the Island this winter

Before the end of this year, there will be 27 shiny new bus shelters arriving in Charlottetown, Stratford and Cornwall.

For transit users more bus shelters mean less time waiting outside in the wind, snow or rain.

"We want to make sure that if we have the added comfort of a shelter in your area, then at least you can wait inside a shelter," said Mike Cassidy, the owner of T3 Transit. "There's a roof over your head, and you've got walls on three sides of you."

17 new shelters will go up in Charlottetown, five in Stratford, and five in Cornwall.

"Cornwall has never had any, so the excitement is we can place five at very strategic locations for Cornwall," said Cassidy.

Shelters should be fully installed by 'the snow-flying, early December'

Cassidy said the shelters are expected to arrive on the Island by September, and should be fully installed by "the snow-flying, early December."

The shelters will be placedwhere they're most needed, according to Cassidy.

"We will identify the heavy volumes and we are going to do our best to have a shelter in those heavy volumes."

Cassidy gave two examples: one shelter will go up near the local shopping centre in Cornwall and another will go up near the North River Rink in Charlottetown. He said both locations are big spots for pick ups.

'Tremendous number of shelters'

At present, there are a total of 36 bus shelters between Charlottetown and Stratford. The new shelters will bump up that number to 63 for the greater municipal area, which Cassidy describes as a "tremendous number of shelters."

The total cost including glass, delivery, and local installation can cost $10,000 or $11,000 per shelter, explained Cassidy.

P.E.I. was allocated $660,000 from the 2016 federal budget to put towards public transit infrastructure. The province and the municipalities matched that number to bring the total up to just over $1.3 million for transit infrastructure over 2016 and 2017, said Cassidy.

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In addition to the new shelters, Cassidy explained that the Island now has 11 refurbished buses delivered from the Calgary municipality, all T3 Transit buses will soon have wifi, and there will also be a new GPS program on all buses so that riders can track the location of their bus while they wait.

The new technologies should be fully launched by September of this year, and transit users should have a dry place to wait for their pick ups in time forwinter.

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