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The wheels on the bus no longer go round and round in the Sambro Loop area but the doors on a new area bus could soon go open and shut.

“I think it’s going to happen,” said Brendan Maguire, the Liberal MLA for Halifax Atlantic.

“I am going to do whatever I can to support it. It’s definitely needed in the community.”

Metro Transit scuttled bus route 402 in August 2017 as part of the Moving Forward Together plan to overhaul the entire municipal bus service. A petition supporting the 34-kilometre Sambro Loop route gathered hundreds of signatures and was presented to regional council but low ridership eventually stopped the wheels from turning. It was determined that an average of 25 people per day had been using the service at a cost of more than $60 per rider.

“It wasn’t very widely used but a lot of that had to do with convenience,” Maguire said. “There were two (buses) in the morning and then there was nothing until the evening. If you had to go in town for your groceries, you were less likely to take the bus because you couldn’t get back until 5 p.m.”

Coun. Steve Adams (Spryfield-Sambro Loop-Prospect Road) opposed council’s decision but he was on the wrong side of the vote and the motion to abandon the route carried.

Maguire and Adams initially worked with the Spryfield Business Commission on the new plan to bring bus service back to the area.

“We have a verbal commitment from the province to go ahead with a pilot project in the fall, provided we can demonstrate how we will make up a deficit of approximately $40,000,” Bruce Holland, executive director of the commission, wrote in an April newsletter.

The $40,000 deficit represents the shortfall after provincial and municipal grants and bus fares are taken into consideration, the newsletter post said.

“This means we will have to find a way to make up the deficit,” Holland wrote, adding that the commission is considering fundraising the amount or implementing a small area tax rate with the support of the effected communities. The commission is open to ideas for other funding sources.

Maguire said the proposal submitted to the Communities, Culture and Heritage Department will have to revamped with more specifics about a mapped-out route and bus stops and the funding plan to make up the shortfall.

“There are some holes in the business proposal, one of them being that they don’t have a vehicle (bus),” Maguire said Sunday.

“There are a lot things to be worked on. This is not a no for us. The province supports all kinds of provincial transportation projects but they have to tighten it (proposal) up a bit. We are asking for some consultation from the public on this. I talked to members of the group (commission) and they do have some really good ideas. I think the biggest issue is finding a bus. Even a smaller bus is about $100,000.”

Maguire said he has reached out to a few private shuttle and bus services that run in different parts of the province and none of them were keen on the Sambro run.

“They thought it would be a lot of money to expand out our way and that ridership wasn’t where they needed it to be. But I do think this can be done. It’s just going to take support from the province and the municipality. It really is dependent on the route. If you have a bus route that is convenient and goes the places that people want to go, they are going to use it. But if you have a bus route that doesn’t operate very often and doesn’t go where you want it to go, people are not inclined to use it.”

The idea of having two morning runs and two evening runs sandwiching a single noontime run is a positive idea, he said.

Both the commission and the MLA talked about holding public meetings to garner support and input.

“I think with the right plan, it can happen,” Maguire said. “From my conversations with the (commission), Coun. Steve Adams and the people within the province, it all comes down to do you have a plan. If you are going to be applying for grants and funding and money, you are going to have to have the proper plan.”

He said everyone involved in trying to make the bus route work has to go out to the community to find out who will take the bus and what route can work best.

“If you have the community help design the route, they’ll have ownership over it and they will be more likely to use it.”