By John Francis
A recent press release from Bruce County bragged about the county’s newest EV charging facility. You can now
“Discover EV charging stations at the Bruce County Administration Centre (30 Park Street, Walkerton), the Peninsula Hub (268 Bedford Street, Wiarton), the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre (33 Victoria Street, Southampton), and the Penetangore Hub (529 Gary Street, Kincardine).”
You will notice that none of those is located in MNBP. That’s mainly because there are no County facilities in MNBP to install them at.
The press release doesn’t list the County Roads garages, but then, there aren’t any of those in MNBP either. Why would they need a garage up here? The County Roads system barely makes it up to Lion’s Head and Ferndale.
County run Long Term Care facilities? Well, no. Those are in Wiarton and Walkerton. The Golden Dawn in Lion’s Head has to make do without any support from the County.
Does the County actually provide anything at all in MNBP? Well yes, they do.
There’s those few kilometres of roads, plus a couple of libraries (facilities rented from the municipality), a small seniors apartment building in Tobermory and some subsidies here and there.
And all it costs us is — one third of our tax revenues. A mere bagatelle!
The municipality gets almost the same amount from our taxes, and they have dozens of employees, maintain 700-plus km of roads plus an arena, several community centres, three dumps, umpty boat launches and other conveniences and a fire department. And pay for policing and garbage collection as well.
Compare that to a few km of roads, two rented libraries and a small apartment building. And it’s not just facilities — with most employees reporting to work in Walkerton/Wiarton/Kincardine, very few County paycheques find their way to MNBP.
But is there anything the County could reasonably be expected to provide?
Well, yes. Glad you asked.
The County Road system down south fills in the blanks left by the Provincial Highway system, providing alternative linkages among the communities.
North of Ferndale, all we have is the highway. The alternative routes — if they exist at all — are municipal roads: Forty Hills Road, Stokes Bay Road, Ira Lake Road, Johnson Harbour Road/Dorcas Bay Road (and some of them aren’t fully paved). There are significant sections where there is no alternative route at all other than the Bruce Trail. (Dyers Bay Road to Johnson Harbour Road and Dorcas Bay Road to Tobermory — you can look it up.) At the very least, the County could take over those roads and create new emergency rights of way where there is no alternative to Highway 6.
If there is ever an emergency up here, the airport at Tobermory is going to be an extremely important part of the emergency response. And who pays for and staffs the airport? MNBP.
In fact, the County is pretty much oblivious to MNBP and has simply never felt responsible for providing much of anything north of Wiarton. But how do you fix that when all but one of the members of County Council live down south?
Public Transit in MNBP
Lion’s Head Transportation Authority did an excellent job last year of imagining what a shuttle service should look like in Lion’s Head and then rolling it out. I doubt they broke even on the venture. Tim Matheson made it happen because he thought it needed to be done, he knew how to do it and nobody else seemed interested. I hope the municipality can find a way to work with him again this year; it would be a shame if rules and protocols prevent an agreement.
But one of the questions that keeps cropping up is “Shouldn’t we be offering a comparable service at Tobermory?”
No. We shouldn’t.
Lion’s Head is perfect for a shuttle service. All the “attractions” are in a line, making a perfect back-and-forth route. From McCurdy Street Parking Lot to the arena parking lot to downtown to the beach to the Bruce Trail parking lot on Forty Hills Road and then back over the same route. A single bus can do the whole route. Even if you added the trailhead on Cemetery Road, you could still do the whole run with a single bus.
Tobermory has much larger numbers of people (four of the tour boats carry well over 100 people) and a much more complex, non-linear collection of “attractions”.
What’s more, a number of the “attractions” use parking as a means of crowd control: the Grotto/Head of Trails, Halfway Log Dump, Singing Sands, Little Cove, Dunks Bay, Mermaid’s Cove, Big Tub Lighthouse. If a shuttle offered access to any of those places, they would quickly become overcrowded.
The Blue Heron and Bruce Anchor company shuttles do an excellent job of carrying large numbers of people over simple, high traffic routes. They offer a high-quality experience to their customers while minimizing automobile traffic through downtown Tobermory and pedestrian traffic crossing the highway.
The system ain’t broke; we don’t need to fix it. At least not with more buses. (Sidewalks and bike trails anyone?)
There’s another transit story that gets a lot of talk but no action — the need for some kind of public transit system to get people to Lion’s Head and Tobermory.
It sounds like a great idea but the details are murderous. Where would you start? People are coming from Toronto, from Owen Sound, from Wiarton, from Sauble Beach and the Huron shore. There isn’t one huge parking lot or station you could use as a start point. Likewise, at Tobermory anyway, there is no single end point to use as a terminus. You’d need so many pickup and drop-off points that the whole thing would be unworkable.
The County’s initiatives to improve public transit have chosen not to venture north of Wiarton. For once I agree with them.
