EDMONTON - It was a relatively quiet first two nights for Whyte Avenue's late-night bus service, but Night Ride organizers are still saying the pilot program is off to a great start.
The service ran on Friday and Saturday night from 1:30-3:30 a.m., and during those four hours, total of 80 people made use of it - with numbers growing from 27 people on the first night to 53 on the second.
Angela Turner, with the Responsible Hospitality Edmonton group, blames the relatively low numbers on not being able to do a lot to do a lot of promotion to the University crowd prior to the pilot starting.
"I think that next weekend our numbers will go up and that we'll continue to see our numbers go up as University is back in and more people know about the service and can add it into their plans for Friday and Saturday nights," she told reporters on Sunday.
Although there were worries expressed Friday by Stu Litwinowich, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 560, that the late night service would put drivers at risk of being assaulted by intoxicated passengers, Turner says there were no incidents, except a homeless man wanting to go downtown. She says that police handled the incident as they normally would.
When it comes to safety, Turner insists that all precautions are being taken to keep drivers safe.
"We worked very closely with the taxi industry, with Edmonton Transit security and Edmonton Police Services and we followed all their recommendations."
Night Ride is a $40,000 pilot project aimed at speeding up transportation out of the area to get people home safer and faster. It will run for 12 weekends until April 12, after which city council will assess its success.
Buses run every 12 minutes, westbound only from 103 Street, to areas where most of Whyte's patrons and employees live. Passengers are able to get off anywhere along the route, using the stop-on-request service, which Turner says many passengers took advantage of.
With files from Chris Zdeb, Postmedia News
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