The Transit Riders Union of Edmonton (TRUE) wrapped up their second annual transit challenge this week with a town hall-style forum at the CBC stage in City Centre mall.

TRUE challenged city councillors and MLAs to ride public transit exclusively for one week. Councillors Amarjeet Sohi, Ben Henderson, Don Iveson, and Dave Thiele participated, as did St. Albert MLA Ken Allard.

In the noon-hour discussion on Monday, there were many suggestions about how to improve ETS. Henderson says a better trip planner, one that would take speed rather than door-to-door service into consideration, would have made his trips much easier, while former bus driver Sohi suggested ETS might have an image problem.

“We need to get away from this stigma that only the poor or environmentalists use transit,” Sohi says. “We need to promote [ETS] as a viable mode of transportation regardless of economic status.”

Although none of the public representatives are planning on going completely car-free in the future, Sohi did give up one of his family’s two cars, and Henderson refrained from buying a new car, saying he now uses his old car so infrequently that it will run for a number of years.