B.C. Transit should test a bus service that loops around downtown Victoria as early as this summer, say Mayor Dean Fortin and Coun. Marianne Alto.

They also want consideration given to making it free.

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“We do a great job of moving people into the downtown and out of the downtown, but having this downtown loop would facilitate moving around downtown,” Fortin said.

The two, both members of the Victoria Regional Transit Commission, are looking for Victoria council to support a resolution asking B.C. Transit to try a downtown loop service.

Neither has a specific routing in mind, but Alto said a link that connects to a future E&N Rail terminal on the west side of the Johnson Street Bridge would make sense.

The resolution asks that both free and paid options be considered.

“The question about whether it should be free or not is really addressing the issue of: if you don’t have to collect fares, then you can load and unload from all the doors, which makes for a quicker service,” Fortin said. “And I would assume that most people in the downtown have passes or transfers to get downtown anyway.”

It’s no secret that transit funding is tight, with commissioners just this week approving a budget for next year that calls for no expansion of service and that dipped into surplus funds to offset a property tax increase.

Fortin said B.C. Transit is examining route options, so the timing makes sense. “This is something that’s been discussed for a long time but never formally, so I think it’s important to put it on transit’s radar,” he said.

Alto said the service would add to the vibrancy of downtown. “I’m going to contend, as I did in my motion, that the downtown is an economic driver for the region as well as the city and adding a service like this just makes it that much easier to get around and do all of the neat and cool things we can do downtown.

“We have a ton of workers who work down toward the legislature who, if they had an easy way to do it, would jump on a bus and come up to the north end and use a lot of the restaurants or go shopping and that sort of thing,” she said.

Free downtown transit has worked in centres such as Seattle, so it’s a concept that has some merit, said Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard, a transit commission member. But he wondered where B.C. Transit would find the dollars.

“They’ve left out the part about how you would pay for it,” Leonard said. He noted Langford offers rubber-wheeled trolley service throughout that community, but it foots the bill itself. “That might be a bit of a precedent,” Leonard said. “I think it would be hard for transit taxpayers from Sooke to Sidney to think that they would want to pay for it.”

Maureen Sheehan, B.C. Transit director of sales, marketing and communications, said any new route or expansion “is subject to review based on priority and availability of resources.”

bcleverley@timescolonist.com