Hello CPT Members,

First, thank you for lending your support to our first Annual General Meeting. Your enthusiasm gave a real morale boost to the core group who have been beavering away at this! The difficulty of augmenting the Board remains, but we are confident that others will step forward to help.

Since our Annual General Meeting, I attended a meeting of the Joint Transportation Committee (JTC), the committee representing all four Municipal Councils to discuss possible transit service. Citizens for Public Transit also had a private meeting with Premier Dexter, organized by our MLA Pam Birdsall. This meeting was further evidence of the strong support for transit that Pam demonstrated at the AGM.

Your comments from the discussion groups at the Annual General Meeting have been summarized. We have posted these on the website, which is at http://transitlunenburg.ca/Discussion. Please, by the way, make any comments and suggestions that you may have about the site. We need feedback!

You may know that the Province did come through with a generous grant of $42,000 to help support the work of the JTC. Over the next few months, the JTC is pursuing sensible and cautious fact-finding, to include: 1) becoming familiar with the services of existing community-based transportation groups in our area - Bridgewater Senior Wheels and the V.O.N.'s On the Move service; and to consult with the Kings Transit Authority on the service delivery model in their Region; 2) assessing possible governance models (operating authority and accountability, ownership vs contract questions, potential operators, and like); 3) working with businesses, local groups and citizens to more specifically determine local ridership potential; 4) selecting a viable operating model, including detailed route planning, scheduling and costing for any proposed service.

It is clear that our powers-that-be are not convinced that the "Ridership" is out there, hence are reluctant to commit taxpayers' money to transit. The taxpayers have to tell them how they feel! Please write to your councillor. At the end of this newsletter are a few key ideas that you might consider incorporating. Names and addresses of your Mayors and Councillors are given in Attachment A.

Please think again about joining us on the Board as a Member-at-Large. There are a number of chores that are not terribly demanding - taking minutes, research, fun stuff such as preparing spreadsheets and the like. Above all we need more minds working on ideas and strategy. Put those years of hard-won wisdom to good use! You can contact me at 640-2439 or haslett@eastlink.ca

We are sending this e-mail to some people that we know are interested and would have liked to attend the AGM. If you are one and would like to be a member, please give me a call. The annual membership fee is $1.

Norman Haslett

Chairman, Citizens for Public Transit

haslett@eastlink.ca http://www.transitlunenburg.ca

Ideas for letters on the value of public transit:

• improved quality of life through reduced isolation: opportunities for shopping, social events, recreational facilities, medical appointments
• students can stay for extra-curricular activities after school bus time
• access to job opportunities in neighbouring communities

• transportation enhances the vitality of any community, and the likelihood of survival of rural communities
• to those with access to vehicles, especially in light of probable major increase in fuel cost
• environmental considerations - reduction of vehicle emissions