For over 30 years, community members of the Pontiac have relied on a bus service to take them from their rural homes to Ottawa for work. After a year of working from home, and folks gearing up to head back to the office, many bus goers noticed a major change to their bus route that is impacting people’s lives.

“Everyone was under the impression that this was an extra bus route for the students, not taking over our bus route,” said Kim Lance-Rivet, a community member and associate investment advisor working with a stock exchange.

One night while scrolling through her Facebook account, Rivet came across what seemed at the time an odd post about changes to the bus schedule; she picked up the phone and called the Transcollines bus service.

After speaking to Transcollines it was made clear that the commuter bus that many from the Pontiac have relied on for years has been integrated with a new line. The 148 is no longer a commuter bus and was combined with the new line 910 as of Jan. 4, 2021. Anyone wanting to go to Ottawa, must transfer over in Aylmer.

Rivet and almost 60 to 70 people, according to her, used the old bus service to go from the Pontiac area to downtown Ottawa; she felt blindsided. After asking around, Rivet realized “no one knew about it [the changes].”

She did some digging and gathered information from Transcollines about the new bus route. What she learned made Rivet “absolutely livid.” The changes could add an hour to her commute which potentially meant arriving 30 minutes late for work.

She also reached out to other bus users, such as Lyse Lacourse, a retired federal government worker, who said she was “totally appalled” because she too hadn’t heard about the changes and was a long-standing user of the service.

It wasn’t only a commuter bus that took people to work, it did more than that. For Lacourse, it connected her to her family growing up in rural Pontiac and when she left home for high school it was how she was able to continue to visit her mother.

People are still working from home, but there is a percentage of people that still need the service.

“We don’t have a commuter train. So we have nothing,” said Lacourse.

Taking a bus every day for two hours created a little moving community of people that travelled to and from work, Kimberly Grant said, it was like “a social club.”

“You build up a rapport with people because you spend so much time with them on the bus, so you get to know people, you just know their story,” Grant said.

Rivet echoed that same sentiment and said “we left our blankets and pillows on the bus, had baby showers there, and had wedding showers. That was our community,” said Rivet.

For some, like Rivet, the loss of this commuter bus may mean uprooting her life, “I’ll have to leave my husband and family and find a place to rent in Ottawa or go back to carpooling, which is terrible on the 148 in the wintertime,” she said.

The Equity spoke with Benoit Legros, Transcollines director of development and planning, who said that the initial consultation towards integrating line 148 took place from Oct. 26 to Nov. 9, 2020. At the end of November, Transcollines produced an advertising campaign that went on until December.

“When we put the proposal on our Facebook, we didn’t receive any objection or any comments from people that would have liked to keep the service as it was,” said Legros.

When asked about bringing the service back, Legro explained that one of the major reasons the changes were made was due to the cost of the commuter bus and that it is highly unlikely it comes back for that reason. He said it used to cost $400 to $600 and with the new route, they were able to bring the bus pass prices down.

“The whole community, especially the students, are very favoured by that change, like the cost of bringing back non-connection, the straight line is very expensive. I’m not sure it would be a great move from a local development point of view,” said Legro.

In their Service change proposal it highlighted that “For students, the 910 line provides a direct connection to D’Arcy McGee High School, Collège Nouvelles-Frontières, Heritage College, as well as the Cégep de l’Outaouais Gabrielle-Roy campus.” It also mentioned that users wanting to go anywhere in the City of Gatineau or Ottawa will be able to transfer at the des Allumettières park and ride facility in the Aylmer sector, via the combined pass.

He explained that changes are usually made after hearing feedback from the user and comments and concerns are “studied carefully.”

Nonetheless, “sometimes we were able to respond favourably, sometimes not, but we are [in] constant dialogue with our users. And at the end we take the decision for the greater number of people,” said Legro.

The councillor of Val-des-Monts and president of the board of Transcollines, Claude Bergeron, also highlighted that one of the other reasons the 148-line commuter bus had to be replaced was because during COVID-19 the bus had to stop at Via Rail, which he said, “was not very good.” As well as highlighting that because going into Ottawa is so expensive, the new route is the best service they can provide to their users at this time.

These changes according to Bergeron were not suddenly made this year, he added that they have been studying people’s habits and usage of the bus system. “So when we propose changes like that, it’s because we have done the work to see what would be the best” and he added that the changes were approved by the MRC Pontiac.

“We have to be realistic. Like there are things we can do and things we cannot, this is what we have to take into account,” said Bergeron.

“We are trying to serve people the best we can,” he said. At this time, it will all depend on how many requests the Transcollines receives, said Bergeron, and only then can they judge whether there is something they can do and if they can’t “we will tell them” he said.

When the issues of the loss of the commuter bus were addressed during an MRC meeting two weeks ago, Rivet was told by warden Jane Toller that she would “take your [her] concern and be in touch.”

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