It looks like the idea of busses between Camlachie and Sarnia has been parked.

Plympton-Wyoming councillors asked the administration to talk to the City of Sarnia about the possibility after receiving a request from a resident.

Chief Administrative Officer Carolyn Tripp has found it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it happen. “We would have to purchase a bus, provide the costs for a driver and possibly a secondary driver,” she says

That option was simply too expensive for council says Mayor Lonny Napper. “I think we were looking at a continuation of the service from Bright’s Grove to Camlachie,” he says council didn’t expect the project would cost six figures.

With no guarantees of ridership, council felt it was far too costly. “It was cost prohibitive for us to do something independently based on the numbers we received.”

Tripp says the municipality will monitor what Lambton County is doing. A number of groups are exploring the idea of a county wide transit system. The idea was piloted in the Muskoka area using school buses in between regular runs. Officials say there were some problems with the system including no service in the summer and during snow days, and ridership was low.

The county is working with a number of community groups and the Ministry of Transportation is hosting a forum on the issue in Sarnia in mid August.

Napper wonders if a service will ever come about in the county. “We can’t be everything to everybody,” he says. But he would like to find a way to help college students get to Sarnia for school. “It would be nice to have it run early in the morning and come back at the end of the day to accommodate Lambton College students.”