Business View Magazine | August 2020

138 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2020 AT A GLANCE CKTRANSIT WHAT: A municipal mass transit system WHERE: Chatham-Kent, Ontario WEBSITE: www.chatham-kent.ca/transportation CKTransit C hatham-Kent is a single-tier, mostly rural municipality in southwestern Ontario, created in 1998 by the merger of Kent County and its 22 formerly independent communities. At 2,458 square kilometers, it’s one of the largest municipalities in the region, but with a population of only 106,000, has the lowest population density among Ontario municipalities with a population of 100,000 or greater. Its largest community is Chatham, with 45,000 inhabitants, but other CK communities are as small as a few hundred residents. This makes the provision of efficient and convenient public transit across Chatham-Kent a difficult proposition. However public transit has a long history in the area and can be traced to the late 19th century with the operation of a horse car-powered street railway system in the former City of Chatham. Conventional bus service began in Chatham in 1946, and Chatham Transit commenced operation in 1977 with a fixed-bus route system, which was in operation until 1997. The communities of Ridgetown, Blenheim, Tilbury, and Wallaceburg also had versions of urban or inter-urban services. CKTransit, the municipality’s current mass transit system, was established in 1998 and, today, offers a conventional bus system within the community of Chatham, an inter-urban bus system that goes across Chatham-Kent, servicing multiple communities, and Driving forward