TransLink has no plans to halt the for-pay employee shuttle that Tsawwassen Mills started operating September 29 to help its tenants attract employees in time for the mall’s October 5 launch.
The shuttle travels between the mall, which is at the corner of Highway 17 and 52nd Street, every half hour between 8:15 a.m. and 10:15 p.m. Service on Sundays will end two hours earlier.
It will travel to Scott Road SkyTrain station, where it would also leave every half hour. Each trip would take 25 minutes.
Fees for the shuttle, the only one at a Metro Vancouver mall, will be $2 each way or $40 for a monthly pass.
“We're pleased with the way the traffic is building on the employee shuttle service,” Tsawwassen Mills general manager Mark Fenwick told Business in Vancouver October 4.
While B.C.’s South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act designates TransLink as the exclusive body responsible for approving all independent for-pay transit service operations in Metro Vancouver, TransLink has no plans to halt the shuttle’s operations because the service is exclusively being offered to employees at the mall.
TransLink spokesman Chris Bryan told Business in Vancouver in an email that this “closed service” means that the provincial legislation that allows TransLink to stop private for-pay bus service does not apply.
Bryan added that his organization has “worked with the people at Tsawwassen Mills to ensure their service does not impact our own bus operations in the area, in terms of bus stops and access.”
