PC Connect Rural Route provided more than 20,000 rides throughout Perth County before transit service ended

Between November 2020 and March 31, 2025, PC Connect’s rural-route bus service provided a total 20,018 rides to residents and visitors throughout Perth County.

At Perth County council’s May 15 meeting, county economic development officer Justin Dias presented the final report for the PC Connect Rural Route which, prior to March 31, provided transit for riders between rural communities in Perth County including Stratford, Mitchell, Monkton, Atwood, Listowel, Newton, Milverton, Brunner and Gadshill.

The service was ended this year after a funding agreement through the province’s Community Transportation program ended and county council deemed the cost to operate the service – an estimated $225,103 to extend the service until the end of this year and potentially as much as $1.3 million over the next five years – was too high. Since November 2020, the county received a total of nearly $2.5 million in funding through the Community Transportation program.

“This is just an information report for council to correspond with our project closeout,” Dias said. “We’ve submitted all of our final reports to the province on the deliverables for the rural-route program, so this report … does contain some final information on ridership numbers, funding information, as well as outlines the transfer of administrative responsibilities that Perth County was responsible for to the City of Stratford, which is carrying on as the lead for (PC Connect’s intercommunity transit) project.

“Finally, it just outlines how, as part of our project-management best practices, we’ve got some lessons learned and that ridership data we’ve generated over the last few years, we’ll make that available to our partners, other transportation providers and those looking to fill transportation gaps.”

According to Dias’ report to council, of the 20,018 rides provided through the rural-route program, 16,794 of them were for adults, 378 were for children or youth, 953 were for students and 1,893 were for seniors. Year by year, the service grew from 429 rides in 2020-2021 to 1,694 rides in 2021-2022 (295 per cent), to 3,690 rides in 2022-2023 (118 per cent), to 6,135 rides in 2023-2024 (66.3 per cent) and, finally, to 8,070 rides in 2024-2025 (31.5 per cent) before the service ended in March.

Following council’s direction to discontinue the bus service at its Dec. 5, 2024, meeting, county staff began the administrative winddown and public notification of the PC Connect Rural Route discontinuation with the last day of service scheduled for March 31, 2025. Public notification included a variety of activities including a news release, social-media notifications, direct outreach to community partners, notification to riders through the Blaise Transit App, posted signs at affected bus stops, signs on buses and responding to media inquiries.

Presentations and updates were also provided at various meetings of local business improvement areas (BIAs), business associations, economic-development committees and chambers of commerce, among other community and stakeholder meetings. A prominent banner continues to appear on the Perth County homepage and all PC Connect information related to the remaining routes is now available on the City of Stratford website.

A redirect landing page remains live on the Perth County webpage and automatic redirects are in place for any existing PC Connect links including those found in route maps, QR codes, postcards and other advertisements. These redirects will remain in place over the short-term to ensure riders can continue to find information on remaining PC Connect routes.

County staff continue to stay involved in the Southwest Community Transit (SCT) association to remain engaged in regional-transportation discussions as well as provide PC Connect ridership data to community transportation partners looking to fill transportation gaps.

The PC Connect Rural Route pilot was primarily funded through $2,467,464 in Community Transportation grant funding and $130,333 in fare revenue. The county’s total contribution to operate the service over the pilot-project period through to March 31 was $73,960.

PC Connect Routes 1, 2 and 3 offering service between Stratford, St. Marys, London, Kitchener-Waterloo and North Perth remain in operation, however the City of Stratford, Town of St. Marys and Municipality of North Perth are actively seeking ways to make that bus service more cost efficient and sustainable beyond the end of provincial Community Transit funding.