Custom Transit Service for the Disabled in Greater Vancouver

This paper describes how British Columbia Transit (BC Transit) was established as a provincial Crown corporation by the BC Transit Act of 1978 and assigned responsibility to: (1) designate local and regional transit service areas; (2) establish local and regional transit commissions; (3) consult with local municipalities with a view to providing transit services; (4) establish annual operating budgets and capital budgets for each public passenger system under the BC Transit Act; (5) review all annual operating agreements; (6) provide transit services and maintain and operate a public passenger transportation system consistent with an approved budget in each transit service area; and (7) recommend to the Lieutenant Governor in Council the formulas by which a municipality or regional transit commission may exercise its powers to raise funds to contribute its share of transit costs. The paper describes how there are many conventional transit systems in Vancouver, Victoria and in 22 other communities. Paratransit systems, usually single-vehicle, demand-responsive services mainly for elderly and handicapped people, operate in ten small communities. The paper describes Custom Transit or handyDART, a parallel transit service solely for the disabled is now available.