This letter was originally sent to members of Guelph city council.
As concerned citizens of the City of Guelph, we are writing to inform you of the impact that the recent Guelph Transit route changes are having on our lives. Community Voices is a group of people with lived experience of poverty who meet to discuss our experiences and work collectively toward making positive change. Community Voices acts as an advisory committee to, and is supported by, the Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination.
As a result of schedule/route changes, we would like to offer the following observations based on our experiences:
There has been a noticeable increase in late buses, buses that do not arrive and full buses, leading to an increased number of missed or late arrivals to important appointments, jobs and school. This has resulted in an overall increase of total travel time.
The new system is neither user-friendly nor easy to understand, leading to increased anxiety and “getting lost” experiences among our special-need and ESL friends and family.
Service times do not allow people to get downtown or home from downtown during off-peak hours.
The reduced stops in the Chillico Heights, Fife Road and industrial areas now require us to walk in dangerous circumstances through unplowed verges, on busy streets or in unlit areas to get to new bus stops.
The most recent fare price increase has not led to increased service.
As lower-income earners living in Guelph, we are not able to fall back on other types of transportation such as taxis or private cars. Subsequently, we rely completely on transit service and now feel that transit is now dictating our actions rather than serving our needs. Being late for important appointments adds to the stigma we experience as “poor people who don’t care,” when we are in fact doing as much as we can to meet our obligations, take care of our families and generally just make ends meet.  The changes in transit schedules have increased the daily amount of stress in our already very stressful lives.
Please take the time to review our concerns.  As regular users of the Guelph Transit system, we feel it is important that those who have the power to alter service maintain connections with those most fundamentally impacted by those changes. In the future, we ask that a more complete community consultation process, one including services users from all demographics as well as bus drivers, be included prior to implementing any substantial changes.
Barb McPhee
Chair, Community Voices