Business View Magazine | March 2020

143 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2020 taxes and 35 percent from fares. In an effort to boost ridership, Halifax Transit, under the leadership of its Director, Dave Reage, has been working diligently over the past several years to increase and improve the system’s offerings and services. A big part of that effort is encapsulated in its Moving Forward Together Plan, whose guiding principles include: • Increasing the proportion of resources allocated towards high ridership services • Building a simplified transfer based network • Investing in service quality and reliability • Giving transit increased priority in the transportation network Another aspect of the Moving Forward Together Plan concerns a continuing effort to redesign service routes over several years - getting rid of obsolete ones and changing others where necessary. The 2019/20 fiscal year included changes to 19 transit routes, representing approximately a quarter of the existing transit service. Future route changes will depend on funding mechanisms, as well as operational capabilities. The Moving Forward Together Plan was the most successful public consultation, in terms of number of people engaged, the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) has ever done. Rather than the traditional town hall meeting, Halifax Transit had members of a street team approach random citizens out walking, or at the grocery store, and give a 10-second outline of the plan, along with a card and website link where they could learn more and fill out a survey. “That type of innovative approach is the reason we had such a large response,” Reage explains. “The last time we did a plan like this we got 2,000 and our goal was to double that. This time it came back with 16,000 and blew our expectations out of the water.” HAL I FAX TRANS I T