Whistler Transit Wins National CUTA Award

June 19, 2007

Union Honours WAVE For Exceptional Holiday Service

Whistler’s transit service has been honoured for the exceptional service it provided during the 2006-’07 holiday period.

The Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) on Tuesday (June 12) placed Whistler’s among the six transit services nationwide to be honoured with National Transit Corporate Recognition Awards, which honour outstanding performance as selected by a national committee of transit professionals. The awards were handed out at the CUTA annual meetings in Halifax.

“This award is for the drivers,” Mayor Ken Melamed said in a statement issued by the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW). "Whistler Transit drivers and management provide exceptional service day in and day out, 23 hours a day, whatever the weather.

“I take the bus regularly because it provides reliable, friendly service and helps me get around Whistler in a very environmentally friendly way.”

During the 14-day holiday period, the Whistler and Valley Express (WAVE) system carried 291,000 passengers, an average of more than 20,000 passengers per day, or more than 78 passengers per hour.

By comparison, the most recently published peak-month ridership figure for Greater Vancouver is 35.1 per hour, while the average for Greater Victoria was 39.6 passengers per service hour. That means the WAVE operated at double the peak performance level of the two largest transit systems in B.C., using smaller buses, RMOW officials said.

Whistler and Squamish won a CUTA award last year for the Squamish-Whistler commuter service. Other transit services recognized by CUTA at the 2007 awards were Toronto, Windsor and Thunder Bay, Ont., Laval, Que., and Charlottetown, P.E.I.

WAVE, which is 15 years old, operates for more than 67,000 hours per year, daily from 5:25 a.m. to 3:15 a.m.