Mike Spicer, manager of Medicine Hat Transit explains the MHTnow pilot project. (Photo Courtesy of Ross Lavigne)

By Chris Brown

Three months in city's north

Medicine Hat Transit to pilot on-demand service

Sep 15, 2020 | 5:02 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Medicine Hat Transit is launching an on-demand service later this month for riders in the city’s northeast and northwest.

The pilot project, called MHTnow, will start on Sept. 28 and run until the end of the year, replacing the current weekday evening service north of the river.

“We’ll be able to go places in the northeast and the northwest of the city that a fixed route currently doesn’t cover. So we’re going to open up the service to more people in the north which we think is really exciting,” says Mike Spicer, manager of Medicine Hat Transit.

MHTnow will operate similarly to a ride-hailing service, said Spicer, providing more pickup and drop-off locations and allowing riders to better tailor their trips. That will bring locations like Costco and the Canalta Centre into play.

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“The pilot will allow us to get a lot of data a lot of information a lot of the travel patterns of the people that are currently travelling in the north,” he said.

An MHTnow trip will cost the same as a trip on the regular transit system and riders can pay the cash fare or use a monthly pass.

Depending on the time of night and how many customers are booked, riders could be picked up by a small bus, a 30-foot bus and potentially it could be a 40-foot bus, Spicer says.

“We’re starting with the smaller vehicles in order to test it out. We’re seeing how the demand takes off and then we’ll respond with the appropriate vehicles,” Spicer said.

Rides aren’t guaranteed to be solo rides like with other ride-hailing services, but Spicer says the customer will always control their trip.

“If we had 15 people we’re all picking up in the same time (the app) would prioritize where the pickups were to where the drop-offs were. We’re looking at not having any trips that are more than 15 minutes. So wherever you are going you will not be on the bus for more than 15 minutes. That’s the hope anyway,” he said.

Medicine Hat Transit has been mindful of limiting the intrusiveness of the predetermined pick-up and drop-off locations. Spicer says they’re trying to avoid having buses on streets that have never had one before, but will also make the walks customers as short as they can.

The app also allows riders to see the location of their bus, the estimated time of arrival and receive notifications on their phone before the bus arrives.

The app will be available from Apple and the Google Play store and people without a smartphone can call a booking agent ahead of time.

The last Medicine Hat Transit change

Spicer says this won’t be a repeat of 2017, the last time attempts were to change transit. He wasn’t in Medicine Hat at the time, but is well aware of the situation.

“I think the important key to this is the engagement and the opportunity to engage with the public. We’re making sure that we reach out and we explain the project and we explain the program,” he said.

For the first couple of weeks, Medicine Hat Transit representatives will be on the buses with the operators and will be at the downtown terminal talking to the public, responding to questions and listening to concerns. and helping them along with it.

“We’ve done some outreach to a lot of our community groups and so far the response has been very positive. But again, we’ll be ready for anything that comes up, we will address it and hopefully people will be able to enjoy on-demand in Medicine Hat.”