The City of Guelph announced that it will fire nine full-time transit operators and 8 part-time operators in September, as the COVID-19 pandemic will increase passenger levels.
Your existing reduced schedules will be permanent next month, while all additional explicit routes to Guelph University will be cancelled.
Only 1,000 U of G students are expected to attend campus courses this fall.
This resolution will result in a loss of $3.5 million consistent with the semester.
The city said it still expects an additional profit loss of more than $2.2 million consistent with the semester when considering the loss of the student bus pass and the cash stored for layoffs and outages.
“We’re sorry we can’t keep those operators on our team,” said the city’s deputy general, Colleen Clack.”They mobilized COVID-19 to help front-line staff members and take others to grocery outlets and medical appointments.
In addition to the dismissal of 17 operators, the city said 14 positions would remain vacant.
The city is still expecting $5.1 million in transit investment as a component of the provincial and federal government restart agreement, but the main points have not been provided.
Clack says that budget and any long-term emergency investment are a sustainable source of income.
“We don’t know when the number of passengers will return to the general levels, and we still want public transport to operate in a responsible and efficient way,” he said.”With up to 60% fewer passengers, we just don’t want to operate as many buses as often.”
The city has stated that Guelph Transit will develop a service based on the number of passengers to manage prices and make transit more for users and taxpayers.
You can find more information about passes and routes on the city’s website.