To the editor,
Bill McEwan, CEO of Sobeys, was right on when he commented on April 14 in Port Hawkesbury that the towns of Pictou County needed to merge, or at least adopt a more co-operative spirit.
As past-president of Transport 2000 (now Transport Action) Atlantic I remember when the provincial and municipal governments in Nova Scotia traded financial responsibility for social service benefits and transit funding in the mid-1990s. When municipalities took over the transit system with a new garage and new transit buses previously funded by the province, they immediately took to squabbling over joint funding. Discussions became so acrimonious that the excellent four-route system was dismantled and buses sold to the Halifax system which used them on lightly travelled routes.
About 30 per cent of our citizens do not have easy access to a car. These include students, seniors, disabled, low income or unemployed persons and even "single car" families. Without transit many do not have access to educational, medical, shopping, or employment opportunities. The alternative is an often unaffordable investment of $8,000 or more in annual operation of an automobile.
In the Annapolis Valley, for example, an excellent Kings Transit system exists which carries 360,000 people annually, largely due to co-operation of town and county governments in Kings, Hants, Annapolis, and Digby counties.
Even if the towns of New Glasgow, Stellarton, Westville, Trenton, and Pictou and the county as a whole cannot agree to full amalgamation, they should certainly be able to agree to co-operate on essential services such as public transit.
John Pearce, Dartmouth
Past-President, Transport Action Atlantic
