Getting to today’s AccessAbility Open House in St. Thomas will not cost you a bus fare. City council agreed at its August 10th, 2026 meeting to waive transit fees for anyone riding to or from the event, which runs from 2 to 7 p.m. today at the Joe Thornton Community Centre.
The open house is free and open to everyone. It is the annual event of the St. Thomas Municipal Accessibility Advisory Committee, the council-appointed body that advises the city on accessibility and reviews its buildings and plans, run together with its Elgin County and Central Elgin counterpart. The idea is to put residents in one room, the centre’s Doug Tarry Room this year, with the vendors, organizations and community groups working on accessibility and inclusion in St. Thomas and Elgin. The afternoon includes vendor and community exhibits, a sign language interpreter throughout, door prizes, a wheelchair basketball demonstration at 5 p.m. and a performance by Dreams Come True Music Studio at 6 p.m. The city says the first 100 people through the door get a free tote bag and a free drink.
Council’s waiver covers the fare in both directions, and the city says it works on every kind of ride. On the regular buses, the fare is waived on request. “If they just let the driver know that they’re going to the accessibility open house, then the driver will waive the fare for them,” said Conner Hindley, the city’s sustainable transportation coordinator, in a phone interview Tuesday morning. To get there, take any Railway City Transit route to the Transit Hub at the Smart Centre, then transfer to Route 2 (Hospital), which stops at the community centre. Route 2 leaves the Hub at 15 minutes past each hour.
RCT OnDemand and Parallel Transit rides are free too, as long as they are booked to or from the two stops right outside the centre on Caso Crossing, Hindley said. The catch is getting home. Regular bus service ends at 5:45 p.m., and on the posted schedule the last Route 2 bus heading back toward the Hub passes the centre at about 5:39 p.m. After that, the only bus is OnDemand, which runs until 9:45 p.m., with last pickups about 15 minutes before that, and Hindley said it was likely already booked up for the day by Tuesday morning. Anyone counting on a ride home after 5:45 p.m. should call 519-631-0001 first to check availability.
The free-fare request came from the Municipal Accessibility Advisory Committee itself, and city staff expect it to cost about $300 in lost fare revenue, covered by this year’s environmental services budget. Council approved the same waiver last year, at the same $300 estimate, for the September 26th, 2025 open house. Council also used the August 10th meeting to put the committee on firmer footing. The committee had only ever existed by council resolution; that night, council passed By-law 115-2026, formally establishing it under the province’s Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, which requires an accessibility advisory committee, with a majority of members who have disabilities, in every Ontario municipality of at least 10,000 residents.
The 5:45 p.m. cutoff for regular buses is not new, and it is not just an accessibility issue. As LocVox reported this month, a public engagement report on the future of Railway City Transit, presented to council in August, found riders across St. Thomas asking for evening service that runs later, along with more on-demand capacity, as the system’s on-demand trip requests have tripled since 2020. Today’s open house is a small, one-day fix for one event. Council is not expected to see final recommendations on the bigger fix until the second quarter of 2027.
The doors are open until 7 p.m., and the ride is free in both directions. Getting home after 5:45 p.m. depends on OnDemand availability, so call ahead if you plan to stay late.
Sources: AccessAbility Open House – Free Transit Request, Report ES-48-26 (City of St. Thomas, Aug 10, 2026) · Council Meeting Minutes, City of St. Thomas, Aug 10, 2026 · Route 2 (Hospital) Timetable (City of St. Thomas)
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
