Dial-a-Bus

Waiting on the corner for the morning bus is at best a frustrating experience in any city. In Regina, Saskatchewan (pop. 143,000), where temperatures often hover at 20DEG below zero, it can be downright hazardous. For some residents of Regina's south side, however, bus waiting is no longer a problem. A simple phone call will bring a city bus right to their front door.

Regina's "Telebus" system, begun as an experiment six months ago, has proven to be a remarkable success. It is not only convenient for the 18,000 residents in the 3-sq.-mi. district now served by Telebuses but also financially beneficial for the city transit system, which needs more passengers to cut its deficit. During a particularly bitter cold snap early in January, the city's eleven 42-passenger Telebuses responded to an average of 2,000 calls per day. Cost of the service: 35-c-, only a dime more than the standard fare.

For morning commuters, the transit system guarantees that a Telebus will arrive within 15 minutes after a call. The bus quickly collects a full load of south-side passengers and drops them off at a comfortable waiting room, where regular buses pick them up for the ride to Regina's downtown area. In the evening, the Telebuses pick up returning workers at the waiting rooms and deposit them at their doorsteps.

Similar experiments have been under way in the U.S. since last October. The Ford Motor Co. planned and helped to inaugurate phone-bus systems in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Columbus, Ohio. Consultants from M.I.T. helped to set up another in Batavia, N.Y. But none of the U.S. experiments compares in size to the system in Regina, where Transit Manager Wally Atkinson expects to make Telebuses available to 60,000 citizens by the end of the year and to provide citywide coverage by the end of 1974.

Some south-side Regina residents have enough confidence in the system to send three-and four-year-old children (with name and address tags pinned on) on short bus hops to nurseries and day-care centers. Partygoers are enthusiastic about a suggestion that they avoid Regina's stiff drunk-driving penalties by leaving their cars home and taking the Telebus. But the current schedule offers no encouragement to really dedicated drinkers: the last Telebus pickup is at 11:45 p.m.

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