Welcome to Keep it Downtown!
The Fredericton Acadian Bus Lines terminal has moved from its downtown location to a temporary location at Hubbard Lane, which is outside the downtown area.
Let Fredericton City Council know that keeping the terminal in the downtown core is of utmost importance!
SIGN THE PETITION! (Please note: Including what’s shown on the petition site, we have collected over 1,500 signatures on paper)
We the undersigned draw Fredericton City Council’s attention to the following:
THAT:
- an intercity bus service is an integral part of a vibrant downtown core
- the City of Fredericton has professed its desire to be a green city, and the use of public transportation reduces greenhouse gas emissions arising from the use of personal vehicles
- the City of Fredericton is home to several post-secondary institutions, with many students of these institutions needing convenient and affordable access to public transportation on weekends and holidays
- a bus terminal is a valuable opportunity to encourage tourism by making a good first impression on those passing through our community; while a poorly-designed or inconvenient terminal reflects negatively on our city
- those relying on public transportation are often on limited incomes, and should not be expected to bear the increased cost of cab fare to get to a distantly located bus terminal
THEREFORE, we petitioners demand that the City of Fredericton take immediate action to secure a downtown location for the Acadian Bus Lines Terminal.
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Transportation hubs are important to the downtown core. Most major cities around the world have their ground transportation hubs in the core of the city. Look at Toronto’s Union Station or Montreal’s Via station in Centre Ville. Moving the terminal to the outskirts of the city will not only impact ridership but impact the city’s carbon footprint by requiring people to travel further or use their own vehicles for transportation.
I hear that the Irving’s own the property and need it for a parking lot. If so why can the bus depot not be moved to the old train station empty area that they don’t seem to be using for any purpose that I can see????/
There is an alternative!
This vacant area on Woodside Dr. is a GREAT area for a bus terminal (and perhaps a well-kept attractive building to boot) BUT all we need is to ensure that Acadian lines makes a stop at any central location like the Student Union building or the Irving downtown. Both of these locations are completely capable of selling tickets. They do this very thing in Wolfville! There is a stop at a local convenience store as well as a stop on campus.
Easy huh? No petitions required, not that city council has much of a say in the matter for the record.
Uh – NO! Not very easy. Do you remember the what the weather is like here in Fredericton the other 8 months of the year? These places are not set up to be bus stations. I don’t want to wait, when the bus is 2 hours late, which it often is in the winter, in some gas station!
They might use this excuse ‘oh – we will have stops downtown…’ to get council to vote yes on this and then just cancel the stop a couple of months later.
We need the bus terminal DOWNTOWN.
Holly (IP: 205.174.161.3 , city.fredericton.ca)
Interesting that you are responding from a City of Fredericton account.
I have taken the bus across Canada, and to and from the University of Guelph on many occasions. Many stops are at convenience stores. One thing that I’ve noticed, however, is that a convenience store is not a location where one can SIT, read, bring in one’s own food. Convenience store cannot handle the large numbers of waiting passengers as currently use the Fredericton terminal.
While many small communities use convenience stores, as a pick up location, cities have a station that people can use. It appears that you haven’t thought through the logistics of your recommendations. It is ironic that you have suggested the cause of this unhappy situation, (private property of Irving) as a pick-up location.
The old bus terminal in Montreal used to be at Atwater, quite far west of the current bus terminal which was opened in the middle of the city in the late sixties, so it was made more central. It gave the city a facelift. Ottawa’s terminal is not quite downtown, but near the Queensway, however it is clean and new looking. Toronto’s terminal was very old and though central really needed a facelift, and I recall one was proposed, but I haven’t seen it. Fredericton’s terminal is in dire need of a new look, even if it stays in the same location. It has looked the same since the 1970s or earlier. It used to have a snack bar but that closed, probably because of the Tim Horton’s across the street. The parking lot is very small and full of potholes. It does not offer much comfort to travellers with plastic seating and very old, dirty washrooms, and does not represent Fredericton very well to visitors. I like the idea of bringing the buses to the students by making several stops on campus and downtown to save them cab fare, if it means a brand new, clean, comfortable, state of the art terminal could be built. Really, this city is so small that neither the buses nor the cabs have very much mileage to cover to get people to their destinations. There could also be a Fredericton City Transit bus route linking a new Acadian Terminal to the downtown.
To Sylvia,
I agree that the parking lot needs fixed, and perhaps the city could time the lights at King and Brunswick to go red to stop traffic from blocking a leaving bus at departure times. And maybe the washrooms could be fixed up. And maybe better chairs. BUT, I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that the bus terminal’s current location is central and convenient. I don’t think having a state-of-the-art building on the fringes of the city is going to make a lick of a difference if it’s on the fringes of the city. The proposed location is out of the way, and is going to drive travel costs up, either directly to finance your suggested state-of-the-art terminal, or indirectly through cab fare by traveling to and from the terminal (because Transit Route 15 to Hanwell Park certainly doesn’t run often enough to be convenient to travellers, especially on Saturdays).
Sylvia, if your issue is that the terminal is a little dingy looking, it doesn’t follow that the solution would be to move the terminal to an out of the way location. The solution would be to renovate the building.
But in actual fact, the appearance of the current bus terminal has absolutely nothing to do with why it is being forced to relocate. The Irvings (owners of the current property) want to use that space for another purpose (rumor has it that this other purpose is a parking garage–do you feel that a parking garage would be an aesthetic improvement over the current terminal?).
In any case, the city could step in to help re-zone another centrally located property for use by Acadian Lines because the real issue here is that the social consequence of moving the terminal to an out of the way location far outweighs the impact of having a not-so-beautiful building in our downtown core. Making several stops within the city would still not solve many of the problems that would be associated with the proposed move including the fact that there are often long waits between connecting routes which would force travelers to wait around in an isolated terminal for an hour or two without getting a chance to see what our city has to offer, or even find something to eat beyond what’s typically available in a bus terminal vending machine. On the other hand, a pleasant experience at a downtown transfer point might even result in a more prolonged visit to Fredericton at a later date.
Also, have you ever seen the bus terminal during busy travel times? Long line-ups of travelers wait to board the buses, and suitcases pile up waiting for bus personnel to load them into the cargo area. It actually takes quite a lot of space to organize all these passengers and luggage, and the process could not be easily accomplished in a downtown location that did not have dedicated space for this purpose.
Finally, the notion that this city is so small that it doesn’t matter where the terminal is located could only be held by someone who has a personal vehicle. My guess would be that most bus travelers do not own a vehicle. And by not owning a vehicle, they are doing a great service to society by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other types of air pollution. The response to this should be to make their choice of transportation MORE convenient, not LESS convenient.
As a downtown business owner and a person who uses the Acadian Bus Lines to travel to the North Shore frequently, I have to shake my head over the completely non-sensical move of provincial bus services from the downtown core to the oustskirts of the City of Fredericton, more than six kilometers from the downtown core in fact.
I use the ABL at least once or twice every two weeks, either for my business sending parcels or as a passenger taking the bus to do business in Moncton or Saint John for example or on personal visits to see my 92 year old mother in Bathurst.
Every time I have to send a package using ABL, I can walk from my office to the terminal, pay my ten bucks and be guaranteed that the package will arrive at its destination in New Brunswick within four or five hours on the same day.
That’s a significant difference in cost and delivery time compared to the competitors like Canada Post, Fed Ex or UPS that charge upwards of $25 plus tax to do the same thing, and definitely not on the same day.
For me, this issue is even more important because I do not drive and I will have to take a taxi up to the Hanwell Road from downtown, process my package at the terminal, then call another taxi to bring me back downtown. This move is going to personally cost me three times the amount it would cost if the terminal remained within a reasonable walking distance downtown.
There is also the very significant issue of spin-offs for the downtown businesses. Through my line of work as a writer, I have many friends who pass through the City on their way to meet relatives and friends in the south and north of the province. One lady passes through Fredericton at least once every month or so and we always get together with another friend and go to the Lunar Rogue to have a meal. Those meals are not going to happen any more and that’s $100 the Lunar Rogue and its servers are not going to see. That’s just one small example, and I imagine there are thousands just like them because thousands of people use that bus every month and I am just one of them with my own bus story. Imagine the money that is spent at the restaurants and stores in the downtown by people who have a one or two or even three hour way for the next bus to Quebec or Toronto or Halifax. This is a central transportation hub and it has to remain in the center of the City, not in the boondocks out on Hanwell Road. I have never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. Actually, I have heard of something so ridiculous – and that’s when they moved the Department of Social Development up to Two Nations Crossing. That move was on par with this harebrained scheme.
The City of Fredericton MUST work with the ABL to find an alternative location in the downtown core. It is the City of Fredericton’s responsibility to maintain the transportation infrastructure in the city. Transportation has to be accessible and affordable. Throwing another $20 in taxi fares onto the already steep costs of taking a bus to Bathurst, Moncton, Saint John etc. is going to shut some people out of the transportation loop altogether…. and you know who they are – the ones who cannot afford a $100 return ticket from Fredericton to Bathurst. I know many people who have to scrape to get the money together for a ticket to Moncton, Saint John or Campbellton and this extra $20 in taxis is going to put a stop to those trips.
The city keeps moving stuff out to the Hanwell that are designed mainly for walkers. If the people using the buses had a way to get around like a car, they wouldn’t be taking the bus. The Hanwell is really far away from most of the residential zones in Fredericton, especially the North side.
While other cities are now making large expenditures to return public transportation hubs back down, Fredericton has been fortunate to have terminal located downtown. This apparently has been due to the business issue – real estate etc for the previous service owner.
I suggest that in an effort to keep the terminal in such a convenient and logical location, the City of Fredericton would be justified in offering an incentive to the bus line owner to remain in the down town area. I suspect that there would be public support for the City to offer a land package or land swap arrangement similar to that done (admirably) for the York St school.
In a way, precedent has already been set by the City providing support for the Convention centre and associated large parking structure. essentially subsidising a travel mode, in this case the automobile. It may be possible to locate a location in the downtown core or downtown North side with convenient access to the arterial highway system for the transit operator while offering easy access for the local residents.
One ideal would be to find a location that could serve as a terminal for the inter-city bus lines and a sub-terminal / transfer station for Fredericton Transit.
I wish the City council good luck with dealing with this issue and hope that a workble solution can be found that will save Fredericton from having to make an expensive terminal return to the down town year’s down the road.
Dave
Right downtown is the most convenient place to have the bus station. Please, please leave it where it is!!
For those currently using Twitter, I’ve started a discussion under the hashtag #acadianlines, so feel free to join! http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23acadianlines
-Ryan
I am really upset that this is happening. We need to let our views be known to City Council! These are comments I made on the Facebook group “Keep It Downtown”, which explain my predicament:
It would seem to me it’s another situation where business controls how the city works. That is – with the development of the uptown (and the box store syndrome), Fredericton becomes nothing more than a pit-stop for highway traffic, and our downtown and sense of community suffers. There has to be a better solution than Hanwell Road! I thought there were some great comments at the library meeting last night, and it was nice to see some other citizens who are concerned about the impact of this decision. I strongly agree with some of the comments made about how this decision is being brought about when the university/community college students are away. It is truly spineless to wait until now to make decisions. I bet if this had been brought up when the students were here, that library meeting room would not have been able to contain all of the students! Given more time, I’m sure we as a community could find a suitable location. I also got another “rumour” for all involved: apparently the YMCA is planning to move to the Albert Street Junior High location (after it’s torn down), which would then leave the old YMCA/YWCA open. This thought falls in line with another comment suggested last evening about the Exhibition Grounds as a potential site.
While we are on the subject of stories, and community impact, I thought I would share my story. Two years ago my marriage ended. Last year I decided to take some steps to better myself. One major decision was to relocate to Fredericton from Quispamsis, to attend the College of Craft & Design. My son (who is 10 yrs old), lives with his mom in Quispamsis, and visits me twice a month via Acadian Bus. I was living in Devon from Oct-March, when I relocated to the Southside downtown area. Part of my decision to relocate was on account of the cost of taxis to and from the Acadian bus terminal to Devon. I do not own a car, so presently it works out so well, as I can walk from my apartment to the terminal, and my son & I can walk back together. Putting the terminal on the Hanwell Road would then become TWO taxi fares to get us back and forth. Someone at the library meeting mentioned that renting a car would be cheaper & more convenient for a weekend, and I am starting to think this is what some (not all), will have to resort to if this move actually happens. This situation is so disappointing. Let’s continue to voice our concerns, and avoid this mistake! Hope everyone can make it on Monday! Thanks for reading!
Steve
As a student, I know this move would cause a great inconvience both time and money wise. I would no longer be able to go home as often as I have in the past because a $20 cab ride is just too ridiculous. And with Fredericton being a student-based town they should quickly realize this and keep the bus station where it is. It isn’t doing any harm and never has. I don’t understand what the big deal is.
there are many places they could use in the downtown area they dont need to move way the heck out there
While I agree that moving the bus terminal to the Woodside Lane location is likely to be a poor business decision, I do not feel that it is anyone’s place but the business owners and the people who live near Woodside lane to debate the relocation. As far as I am aware (do correct me if I’m wrong) Acadian Bus Lines is a private business and as such it is a business decision to be made by them alone.
The reasons given above are valid for why it is a poor business decision, and I do hope that Acadian reconsiders, but ultimately their private business decisions (assuming they aren’t unlawful) are not yours or mine to make, and I sincerely hope it stays that way.
Nathan – It is as simple as this — when the actions of private businesses affect the rest of us then it is the government’s duty to intervene. Accessible transportation for everyone is something that I want my elected representatives to ensure.
If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have accessible transportation to begin with. If we had a provincial busline from another source and they were coming in and interfering with it, I would agree entirely, but that isn’t what’s happening. They’re merely taking their business elsewhere. Trying to force them to keep doing business in a location that is no longer feasible in the name of convenience would be a major infringement on the freedom of the business owners.
If our elected representatives are to ensure accessible transportation for everyone, they should start a provincially run bus system, not step on the right of business owners to take their business elsewhere.
Nathan:
Have you been following this issue, or are you just dropping in here to try and interfere with our cause? You seem to be going against the effort here. If you support City Council’s decision, then you should go down to City Hall and give Woodside & Co. (excluding the brave three who voted against the re-zoning) a big ol’ pat on the back for their efforts! Otherwise, quit posting on a site that is trying to make positive change!
What does your opening line even mean (If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have accessible transportation to begin with.)? Do you think that throwing in elusive statements will somehow change our minds? It’s the same as City Council sitting there Monday night saying “this area is already zoned for highway/commercial use”…what the hell? C’mon, Nathan – this is a common sense issue. And I haven’t even mentioned the environmental impact here…
And furthurmore, this isn’t a matter of “forcing” Acadian to stay downtown, rather it is about getting City Council to work in conjunction with Acadian to find a place that would be condusive to community needs & values.
Hey Nathan: Are you really excited about increasing carbon emissions? How about spending an extra $20 to get to and from the new terminal? If you owned a house on Serenity Lane, would you be happy having buses, taxis, and couriers driving up and down your street all day? Do you even rely on this service? If so, you should be supporting this cause instead of coming on here and supporting a massive blunder, and trying to convince us that WE are the ones who are wrong!
Now, I realize you can come on here and speak your mind, but I wonder if you’d be able to comfortably express your views to an audience of upset students, small business owners, and environmentalists in person? I stood up at City Hall and expressed my views! Maybe you should have come down and told everyone about what a great decision this is! I somehow don’t think you realize the impact these decisions are going to have on our community.
Or maybe you’re just content having Woodside & Co. make the decisions for you? Trust me, if we say nothing, they WILL decide what is best for us…
I would like to direct a comment towards Steve Duggan. One would think that getting a range of opinions on this subject would be important, but you dismiss Nathan and tell him to leave (or at least not to contribute) simply because he doesn’t have opinions that exactly conform to yours. How can you claim to know what’s best for the community if you want to silence those in the community that might not think as you do? If the only people who post here fully agree then you get a false sense of how many people truly support this issue.
Wouldn’t it be better to have an honest discussion of the issue rather than self re-enforcing pats on the back. Before you jump on me for going against the effort, I’m not, I just prefer honest discussion over rhetoric. You might be fighting the good fight, but that doesn’t mean you get an automatic pass. You have to prove to those who don’t think you’re right that you are. It’s easy to convince the people that agree with you, but you have to convince the people that don’t.
On to my comments about the issue…
This move is not good for the city, it not good for the people who use the bus, and I bet in the end it won’t be good for Acadian. It is a bad situation all around, but from the point of view of Acadian it was the quickest solution to allow them to remain operating.
I really don’t know what the outcome of voting no on rezoning would have accomplished. The city could work with Acadian to find a new location, but staying open is the most important thing for Acadian and time is a factor. If it’s too much trouble to stay open in Fredericton then they would be forced to move outside the city. I think we all agree that within the city limits is still much better than anywhere outside of them.
I noticed on the facebook page, people mentioned the train station. It’s not going to happen. The building is owned by Irvings, protected by federal law and would be way too expensive to bring up to code. Acadian isn’t going to put the money forward, and 15 years have already given you the Irvings answer. The location is ideal, but there are too many factors for it to be the ideal location.
Magos:
United we stand, devided we fall. The website is called Keep It Downtown for a reason. And if you had taken a few minutes to read above my post, you’d see I’m not the only one who disagrees with Nathan, so don’t single me out. I went to City Hall and got up and spoke. I’m not saying I’m the expert here, I’m just pointing out some issues Nathan hadn’t recognized.
Nathan says “trying to force them to keep doing business in a location that is no longer feasible in the name of convenience would be a major infringement on the freedom of the business owners”. From the information I’ve been supplied with, Acadian isn’t being forced by anyone. They WANT to leave the location. I think what most people are trying to say is : there are alternatives, and we need City Council and the community to work together to find a more logical solution.
And if you agree it’s a bad idea, why are you even bothering to point the finger at me? We need some unity here. C’mon! The voting “no” on the issue was so that if the proposed location was NOT zoned for commercial/highway use, it may stall Acadian from going there, and buy some time for rational thought, and yes, I agree, some discussion for making this work.
But hey, let’s be honest, Acadian isn’t attending any of these meetings. This deal is probably already decided for us anyway, so enjoy those cab fares, creating more pollution, and destroying the quiet neighbourhoods.
I do not claim to be an expert on this Magos, and if you agree with most of the people on this post, point the finger at elected officials, instead of me, a single father & student who relies on this service (where it is), to see my son on a semi-regular basis.
Sincerely,
Steve Duggan
I’m pointing at you because you told someone to either agree or not bother talking. I see people at the market putting the message out there and if the people they talk to come to this site see that opponents are told to “shut up” they may leave with a negative impression. It had nothing to do with the fact you disagree with Nathan. Feel free to. I disagree with one of the statements Nathan made.
Hey Magos, thanks for helping me to see the error of my ways. I didn’t come on here to fight with people, just to make my points, and get out. I guess you’re right though, everyone should speak their mind, and I should be more respectful of that. I just wanted to state some facts for Nathan, and maybe I came off as a little harsh. I guess I let my emotions get the best of me. Gee, now that I think about it more, maybe the terminal move isn’t such a bad idea afterall…Thanks Magos!
Please do NOT move the bus station away from downtown. The present downtown is easily and conveniently located. I can see NO advantage moving away from downtown.
I practise in Ottawa and Montreal. I rely on the downtown location of the bus station. Moving it will destroy my practice.
Please add my signature to the petition.