The Cold Lake Transit bus schedule will look a little different in the next few weeks. City council has given the thumbs up to a plan that will see some hours of operation cut. The reason for the scaling back is to try to save some money in the 2019 budget. Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland says the city is looking to take a bite out of a deficit.
“(It’s) to reduce the deficit, which is floating around near a million dollars. We gave a direction to administration to narrow that by about ten percent.”
The new plan for the buses will see them run Monday to Friday from 7 am to 9 pm and 9 am to 9 pm on Saturdays. Stat holidays, with the exception of Canada Day, will no longer feature bus service. Copeland says the rollback should save the city a tidy sum.
“Once it’s fully implemented we’ll probably save about $130,000 a year. It sort of matches the goal that we set.”
Copeland stresses that council has no plans to charge a fare for using the buses. He says riders can expect the changes to be implemented within the next 60 days.