Health Connections bus gets viewing

The general manager of Pacific Western Transportation hopes to have its Health Connections bus in Sudbury before the end of the year.

"In a perfect world, we'd hope to have it up and running ... prior to Jan. 1, 2012," said Dean Wright.

The coach, which comes equipped with a wheelchair lift, a handicap-accessible washroom and space for up to eight wheelchairs, would deliver people to medical appointments in multiple locations throughout Ontario.

"Our original intent would be to have a service operate along Highway 17, which basically would connect Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Wawa, maybe as far north as Thunder Bay, and to have another service along Highway 11, which would basically be the Timmins and Cochrane area, down to North Bay and onto the Toronto area from there," said Wright.

Wright, as well as other representatives from Pacific Western, had the Health Connections bus parked in the Sudbury Community Arena parking lot for two hours on Monday, open for members of the public to come and check it out.

The coach seats anywhere from 32 to 50 people, depending on how many wheelchairs are on board.

While the service is not yet established in Sudbury, the company is in talks with the provincial government and gauging interest from the public.

"We continue to work with the provincial government ... to try and get the service up and running and delivered to Sudbury. It's not certain as of yet, our goal would be to obviously get it up into Sudbury as quickly as possible," Wright said.

Pacific Western offers the service in British Columbia, where the government pays 80% to 90% of the cost round trip and riders cover the rest. The average cost for a return trip there is $20, which Wright said could be similar to what it would cost in Ontario.

"We don't exactly know (the cost) because a lot of it would depend on what kind of agreement we could have with the provincial government for funding of the service, what the province would be paying and what the Northern Health Travel Grant could contribute and what the user could contribute."

Based on the tentative schedules they've done, Wright says there could be as many as four to six buses running.

To visit the health connections bus wesite please visit:

https://webmail.cpaont.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?

http://www.OntarioHealthConnections.com