This 16-year-old has a plan to improve public transit in his northern Ontario city

A Sudbury teenager has a proposal he thinks could improve transit in the city and he plans to present it in a petition to city council.

Samuel Sweet, a Grade 11 student at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School, said he started taking the bus regularly when he was in Grade 9.

"The buses are very clean, they're very safe," he said. "What I don't like is basically the routings."

In his petition, Sweet has proposed the city get rid of neighbourhood bus routes which run on a loop, and replace them with "core" routes which are more linear, and run between two transit hubs. 

"All of these neighbourhood routes except for a few will be turned into these core routes which have much faster travel times," he said.

"They are much more direct."

Sweet has also proposed the city add an additional 20,000 service hours to its GOVA transit system, which currently has buses on the road 179,000 hours every year. 

Using the city's own cost estimates per service hour, he estimates it would cost an additional $3 million per year.

Sweet said a lot of bus trips in the city take three to four times as long as driving, but he believes that with his plan, a 30-minute drive would take 39 minutes by bus.

Greater Sudbury city council recently approved an additional 11,000 service hours for the transit service which is being done in two phases, with 6,000 hours added in 2024 and the remaining to be added this year.

Laura Gilbert, the city's acting director of transit services, said staff proposed those additional transit service hours to council based on feedback from riders.

"We do a lot of engagement sessions," she said.

Gilbert said when the city adds more service hours for transit it has to balance current demand with the potential to increase ridership.

"If you build it, they will come," she said.

"We want to build and grow transit. So we're really grateful that Sam is bringing that attention and highlighting that need to the community and getting that petition going."

Gilbert said transit ridership in Sudbury has been growing since the COVID-19 pandemic and reached 6.2 million rides in 2024.

But Gilbert said the city would need to complete its current expansion of transit services before looking at adding additional hours.

"I think there's always a case to review and look to increase hours," she said.