Bus purchase officially rolling

Local residents board a City of Prince Albert bus in the downtown area. On Tuesday, city councillors approved a motion to purchase seven new 35 ft. buses at a cost of nearly $2 million. © Herald photo by Jason Kerr.

City council officially approves $2 million purchase

After months of planning and deliberation, the City of Prince Albert has officially passed a motion to purchase seven new city buses at a combined cost of nearly $2 million.

On Tuesday, city councillors voted to purchase seven 35 ft. diesel vicinity buses from Grande West Transportation at a total cost of $2,947,000. The federal government will pay $614,386 of that total via federal public infrastructure funding.

Ward 2 Coun. Rick Orr sponsored the motion on Tuesday. He said transportation has been an issue since he started on council four years ago, and although he was pleased to see upgrades being made, he also wanted to see more changes to the city’s transit service.

“We have needs that we’ve never sat down as a council and discussed,” Orr said during the meeting.

Orr called for a complete review of the city’s transit system, and also suggested the city consult bus drivers to find out what was working and what wasn’t.

“They’re the experts,” Orr said off the city’s bus drivers.

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