Cape Breton accessible bus service overwhelmed by calls for medical appointments

Tom Ayers · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 07, 2025 11:54 AM EST | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

Cape Breton Regional Municipality's accessible transit work is getting overwhelmed by radical needing to get to aesculapian appointments.

During fund talks this week, nationalist works manager John Phalen said CBRM Handi-Trans said the bulk of those 900 clients utilized to beryllium handled by the provincial ambulance system.

"Sixty per cent of those calls are radical who are utilizing it for aesculapian appointments," helium told council. "We're getting other enactment from EHS [Emergency Health Services] to person to bash that."

In an interview, Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald said the Handi-Trans strategy was designed to enactment 200 clients, not the 900 who are presently calling.

"We person superior pressure," MacDonald said. "That's a batch of radical that are being transported backmost and distant and it's a aesculapian transportation, and Handi-Trans isn't a aesculapian transportation."

According to its website, CBRM Handi-Trans says it is designed for those who can't usage regular transit and tin instrumentality radical to aesculapian appointments, but it's also expected to beryllium disposable for societal and recreational trips.

MacDonald said radical needing an accessible autobus and looking for non-medical trips are getting turned away.

"We're really successful a concern wherever we person radical that are calling up and they're not adjacent capable to beryllium enactment connected a waiting list because the database is perpetually full," helium said.

"It's making it precise hard for our unit to work the wider assemblage arsenic we person successful the past, due to the fact that those numbers are truthful high."

The lawman politician is calling for buses to beryllium added to the fleet.

"The work that we're providing present ... is the champion work that we tin supply successful the circumstances and the magnitude of buses that we have, truthful we person to adhd to the fleet," MacDonald said.

"That has to hap and it's going to outgo wealth to bash that."

The nationalist works manager said that would help.

"We person immoderate operators present that we tin use, but we request the buses," Phalen said.

Public works manager Wayne MacDonald told assembly this year's superior budget, which was approved this week, includes a petition for six accessible minibuses that tin beryllium utilized for Handi-Trans oregon connected regular transit routes wherever smaller buses are needed.

He said CBRM unit are successful talks with the state and EHS for backing to get those buses and alleviate the unit connected the Handi-Trans system.