By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Getting around without a car will become simpler in Brome-Missisquoi starting this summer – as long as you have a smartphone. Transdev and the MRC Brome-Missisquoi have put in place an on-demand shuttle service serving 30 stops in Cowansville, Dunham, Frelighsburg, Sutton, Brome Lake, Bromont, Brigham, Ange-Gardien, Farnham and Bedford, allowing users to travel from one municipality to another and to the Autoparc 74 park-and-ride in Bromont where they can catch onward buses to Sherbrooke or Montreal.
The shuttles run from 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. seven days a week but do not have a fixed schedule; riders need to reserve at least an hour before their planned departure via the Link Transit On-Demand mobile app or the bilingual Transdev website (transdev.ca) and the shuttle will come to them. There is no phone reservation system as of this writing. The service is free until the end of August, and the pilot project is expected to last until June 2025.
Émile Cadieux, Transdev vice president for Quebec, said Transdev had been in discussions with the MRC and elected officials for much of the past year, about the viability of bringing back some form of regular public transit to the MRC. A regular bus served much of the shuttle’s current coverage area before the pandemic, but it was often empty or almost empty, Cadieux said. “We had three choices – stopping the service, investing more money to try to make the [previous] service work, or trying something new,” he told reporters on June 17 in Cowansville. “I’m glad we’re trying something new. Instead of having a bus that’s never at the right place at the right time, now the users are reserving the bus when they need it.”
Mélanie Thibault, director general of the MRC Brome-Missisquoi, said the Limocar service will “complement” the Cowansville shuttle and adapted transit services already offered by the MRC, and the MRC and the company intended to work together to integrate and improve transit services.
“We needed a project like this in the region,” said Bromont mayor and president of the CLD Brome-Missisquoi Louis Villeneuve. He said he expected five to six thousand people to move into the area in the coming years amid the growth of the Bromont innovation zone. “Not all of those people are going to live in Bromont…and we need a way to get them from one town to another or one village to another.”
Several citizens’ groups, notably in Sutton, have been pushing to bring public transit back to the area ever since public health restrictions ended. “People in Sutton are really hopeful that it will work, and it’s great to fight for something…but if we don’t use it, if the numbers aren’t there, it’s not going to last. If you don’t use it, you lose it.”
To learn more or reserve a shuttle, download the Link Transit On-demand app from the Apple or Google Play store onto your iPhone or Android device, or visit transdev.ca.