When Robin East waits for a bus, he makes several considerations before it arrives.
“So if I’m standing here and then I hear the bus coming, I’m going to have to figure out when it’s going to stop, but where’s the door?” he said.
East, who is blind, has to consider everything from where he can stand safely on a platform to where he should board.
Sometimes, the obstacles are literal. During an interview with Global News, East demonstrated how he would navigate Saskatoon’s new bus rapid transit (BRT) stops along Broadway Avenue, but walked into the branches of a tree located on the bus platform.
“So that’s always a problem,” East said. Without echoes or other audio cues, he said, there’s often nothing to tell him a shelter or other physical barriers are in the way.
East helped bring voice announcements to Saskatoon buses more than a decade ago. Now, he is concerned the city is not listening on its latest BRT designs.
“I think the city has done some good work in communications and some good work with regards to that meaningful engagement, but it hasn’t gone far enough,” he said.
“It seems to have a plan and it doesn’t want to move too far from that plan and that means that that engagement is not meaningful.”
East says he considers meaningful engagement an ongoing process between people with disabilities and those designing the system, with good design aligning with accessibility codes.
“We have the Accessible Canada Act and we have a number of pieces from Accessible Standards Canada which allow us to have wayfinding to and from these transportation pieces,” he said. “So there’s no reason why, as they build this system, that it’s not fully accessible.”
City councillors approved a plan in late September for BRT lanes on a stretch of First Avenue, with stations in the centre of the road.
East wonders how those stations will be made accessible, given his concerns about new platforms built in other parts of the city, such as on Broadway Avenue.
The BRT stations built so far are on the side of the road, while those planned for First Avenue and College Drive will be configured differently, with platforms in the centre of the road.
“I’m really frustrated that at this point in time with the building of the platforms, there’s a lot of accessibility pieces that are missing,” he said.
City says consultation has been extensive
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Jay Magus, Saskatoon’s director of transportation, said the city has consulted on accessibility extensively since the BRT project began about a decade ago.
He said the city built a pilot bus station at Saskatoon’s Civic Operations Centre where accessibility advocates were invited to provide feedback and that designers follow the Transportation Association of Canada accessibility standards, which inform factors such as sidewalk width and minimum grades.
When there are no published standards on certain design elements, Magus says the city uses best practices or looks to what has been done in other cities. This method was what informed the yellow tactile strips along the edge of stations, said Magus.
“We saw other cities doing that and so we did some research and we invited accessibility folks into our office to help us pick which one they thought was best for us.”
As work continues on the stations along College Drive, which are expected to be complete in 2027, Magus says accessibility committee members will get a chance to see the stations before they open.
“So they can see the infrastructure, see how it’s going to work, get a feel for it, and then take that back to their memberships.”
Magus adds that a third party will conduct safety audits during multiple stages of the design process for the lanes on 1st Avenue, including during construction and post-opening, that will consider accessibility alongside traffic operations.
Bus rapid transit design is nuanced
Accessibility consultants say designing a BRT system is complicated and that standards alone don’t guarantee a system works for everyone.
“When we think about accessibility and we think of the diversity of disability and lived experience, those types of guidelines don’t always match up with what will actually be accessible for people,” said Pia Dimayuga, accessibility specialist and transit innovator at accessibility and transit consulting firm Left Turn Right Turn.
Dimayuga said it is important that codes are followed to make sure there is consistency in design across cities, but how people interact with design is unique to each city and people with different kinds of disabilities, emphasizing the importance of getting hands-on feedback.
Getting accessibility advocates to test out a system before it is operational is also a good idea, said Dimayuga, adding that it is not typical for cities to do it.
“I think more places should do this to basically show people either an implementation or a prototype of what the system will actually look like,” she said. “The devil is really in the details when it comes to accessibility and someone with a disability may not know that there’s an issue until they actually see it.”
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) says the city has consulted with it on the BRT stations, but it is awaiting further updates.
“There hasn’t been too much recent consultation, but we hope to change that as the project continues on,” said Muhammed Ali, advocacy lead for CNIB Saskatchewan.
Muhammed says the CNIB gave feedback to Saskatoon’s Accessibility Advisory Committee on bus stop locations and other design considerations such as lighting contrast and wayfinding, adding that the group hopes to complete its own accessibility audit on the system.
Magus said that while station designs are complete, adjustments are possible if needed.
However, some items, such as trees located at bus stops, are fixed and cannot be removed.
“So hopefully folks that are partially sighted or blind, they’ll learn where those things are so when they approach that area next time hopefully they can have some sense of where to go,” he said, adding that designers are looking to make sure there is enough clearance for these items.
Full service targeted for 2029
The city now anticipates the entire BRT system will be fully operational in the summer of 2029, according to a news release on Thursday, citing the recently approved corridor on 1st Avenue as the “biggest obstacle” to an earlier full-service launch date.
The city says it will begin service improvements in January, marking the start of a “gradual phase-in” of the system.
Previously, the city targeted a 2028 launch of service.
“With a 2029 full launch, additional time would support testing and further refinement of transit signal priority, queue-jump lanes, staff training and the operational transition to the redesigned network,” the news release says.
The city expects the transit corridor on 1st Avenue, along with other hubs connecting local routes, to be the last portion completed in 2029.
In a report from city administrators to the governance and priorities committee, July is identified as the preferred launch month because ridership dips in summer, leaving time to adjust before schools resume in the fall.
City councillors approved the designs along 1st Avenue in September after administration spent months consulting with stakeholders. The city is still designing this corridor, with construction expected to run into late 2028 and possibly spill over into 2029, according to the report.
Running the new Link network will cost about $13.5 million a year, up from an earlier estimate of $11 million. About $4.3 million is already in the 2026 and 2027 budgets, leaving roughly $9.2 million for council to consider in the 2028-29 budget, according to the report.
The city expects BRT lanes along College Drive to be complete by fall of 2027. Meanwhile, construction on the transit hub will begin in 2028 with a targeted launch in July of 2029.
A 2029 launch would also mean the remaining estimated $9.2 million in operating phase-in costs will be spread over two budget cycles — in 2028 and 2029 — rather than primarily in 2028, the city said.
The BRT system is designed to support rapid transit service across three lines and includes 94 transit station platforms and signal priority, according to the city.
