Monday marked the official kickoff to the Powell River Zunga Bus.
The pilot project is aimed at increasing on-demand bus services in the region and will be running 7 days a week from 12pm to 7:30pm.
It’s different from regular bus service, as Sustainability Planner Anastasia Lukyanova explains, the system is a hybrid between a ride-hailing service and a bus route.
“Say for example if you want to go from the ferry to Townsite market. You would pull out your phone and you would tap Townsite market and the app would say ‘okay we’ll pick you up in10 minutes and we will drop you off in 20 minutes’ and you tap yes.”
“If there is someone else requesting a ride in the same direction then the bus may make another stop on the way, so you may be delayed by a couple of minutes.”
In phase one of the pilot, the Zunga Bus will only service Westview but during the next phases, Powell River says it will start accepting wheelchair passengers and, if capacity allows, add stops outside of Westview.
The Zunga Bus offers door-to-door service in most of its service area and in special areas like Willingdon and Marine Avenue, it uses designated stops.
If you are catching your ride in a special area, the app will direct you to walk to the closest stop.
To learn more about the new pilot program, and the latest service updates, visit: https://zungabus.ca/
