A transportation open house in Winkler last week was a continuation of the city's first round of public engagements held earlier this year.
The goal of last week's session was to provide an update on the feasibility study for the public transportation options.
"We had some great feedback from the community from the first round of engagement. So we were able to present what we heard from the Community as well," said Scott Toews, Director of Planning and Engineering for the City of Winkler.
"We've also done a qualitative review of some options and that allowed us to have a couple of public transportation options that look to be kind of floating to the top for options for us to consider further."
The presentation shared last week at the open house can still be found on the city's website, as Toews noted they're still looking for feedback. They also want to continue sharing the status of the project for people that missed the open house and are still interested in the study so far.
A public survey related to the transportation feasibility study will remain posted online until August 22nd.
"So anyone that is interested, can head to our website and fill that survey out online. If people don't have access to do it online, they could stop by the Planning and Engineering offices in City Hall as well to get a copy of the presentation and survey."
"71% of people that attended the first round of engagement or filled out the survey online were interested in public transportation option, and so that was an interesting takeaway, recognizing the number of people that did attend or who filled out the survey."
The survey also suggested people are wanting other improvements for our transportation system as a whole. "More connectivity with our bike paths,, and our walking paths as well."
"So in the evaluation that we've completed so far, looking at a home-to-hub service or public on request, or the door service looked to be the most feasible from this preliminary evaluation," noted Scott.
Toews says they will now look at these options in more detail on how could a public transportation system be implemented. He says once things are looked at further, and all of the detailed information is set to share once again, they'll be going back to the Community and Council to make a decision on what route to move forward with.
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