HALIFAX—Regional council has given the green light to a pilot project testing Wi-Fi on buses, though some councillors scoffed at adding bells and whistles to a transit system that could use upgrades in frequency and reliability.

The municipality’s transportation standing committee debated the idea in February and recommended regional council give it a try. The motion passed 14-3 at council on Tuesday.

Using mobile hot spots from Halifax Public Libraries, Halifax Transit will outfit 20 of its buses with Wi-Fi for one year. Staff can’t guarantee which routes will be wired but said they’d likely deploy Wi-Fi to the long, articulated buses that service popular routes like the 1, 3, 10 and 80. Outfitting the whole fleet with Wi-Fi would cost about $500,000 up front and $300,000 annually. The one-year pilot will cost about $40,000.

“I think I’d rather spend the money on making buses more frequent and more reliable and working on the routes, rather than putting Wi-Fi,” Councillor Matt Whitman said.

“It’s like putting a cherry on top of a sundae that’s not quite ready for that.”

Councillor Richard Zurawski was fine with the idea of Wi-Fi on buses but had beef with the internet provider contracted to deliver Halifax’s public internet.

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Zurawski cited a CBC report that found Bell had been the subject of more than a third of complaints made between August 2018 and January 2019 to Canada’s Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, a CRTC-approved organization that tries to resolve complaints about telephone and internet services.

“I’m still waiting for a bit of an answer on that, to find out whether any other companies could do this that have a better relationship with their clients than it appears Bell does,” he said.

Municipal solicitor John Traves explained to Zurawski that the municipality was legally obliged to use Bell because it won the five-year, $2.6-million contract in a tender process for public Wi-Fi in Halifax in 2017.

Council also voted on Tuesday to modify its agreement with Bell to move some of the Wi-Fi locations council approved back in 2017.

The public Wi-Fi approved back then was meant to cover the Halifax and Dartmouth waterfronts and two Halifax Public Libraries. But the libraries already had their own internet from a different provider and didn’t need or use the new connections.

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That left a credit on the municipality’s account that will now be used to bring Wi-Fi to the Halifax and Alderney ferry terminals, Bridge and Lacewood bus terminals, the skating oval and parts of the Public Gardens.

Part of Alderney Landing — the pedway between the library and the ferry terminal — was also on that list, but area councillor Sam Austin successfully amended the motion to keep using the library’s Wi-Fi in that area.

Though the data is covered by the credit with Bell for now and part of the existing budget for internet later, setting up those new connections will cost about $54,000.

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