SOAR and Dillon featured in CUTA Forum Magazine

SOAR President Ryan Dunbar, M.Sc.Eng., along with Dillon Consulting Limited’s Erin Blay, MA, MCIP, LPP and Kate McNamara, MPLAN, BES published an article for the CUTA Forum Magazine highlighting The Role of Public Transit in Supporting Resilient Indigenous Communities. 

Transit service in Indigenous communities has much in common with service provision in rural or remote communities more generally: It’s expensive to operate, destinations are dispersed across wide spaces, and often there’s limited pedestrian infrastructure making transit difficult or unsafe to access on foot. Also, like other rural communities, transit in Indigenous communities is a lifeline; critical to building resilient, sustainable communities.

Given these similarities, can we apply lessons learned in non-Indigenous rural or isolated communities to their Indigenous counterparts? Yes and no. While some principles will universally apply, there is an additional layer of complexity and historic injustice which requires consideration. To these ends, before we can cut the ribbon on a new transit service in an Indigenous community, we first need to address some of the larger systemic issues.

Click here to read the full article.