It's not part of the town's local on-demand transit system, but it's an added benefit that has caught the attention of town councillors and will likely be of interest to commuters to and from Cochrane.

Southland Transportation continues to pursue the idea of establishing a regular service to Calgary in addition to the service they will provide in Cochrane on behalf of the town.

In the next few weeks, Southland Transportation will be launching another survey to see if there's enough interest to make the service feasible. They have been researching its potential for the last few years.

"We need some more feedback," says Southland regional director Jonathan Weal. "We need to make sure that the service is viable, that people want to use it."

Southland already provides a weekday downtown Calgary service, but they believe there is the potential to offer a regular service to Calgary's Crowfoot LRT station as well as morning and afternoon stops at the University of Calgary and SAIT.

"The Crowfoot connector wouldn't be just a morning service and afternoon service," explains Weal. "We want to be able to give people access to Calgary Transit so they can, for example, get to Foothills Hospital or to the south health centre or the Peter Lougheed for medical services without having to utilize their own vehicles or having to relay on friends and neighbours for a ride."

There, of course, are other reasons to commute to Calgary and he points to the large number of post-secondary students who make the trip regularly.

"I really think there are a lot of students who travel from Cochrane and have to buy a car in order to do it. Everybody knows that on a student's income it's not easy to maintain and operate a vehicle."

While we look at it from a Cochrane perspective, there's the other side of the equation: people who commute to Cochrane for work.

"Another thing we learned through our people movement studies and transportation studies is that there are a lot of people who commute from Calgary to Cochrane, especially to the larger employers."

Having that connection falls in line with the town's ambition to attract more industry, particularly the hi-tech industry, he believes.

"A lot of studies have shown that cities and towns that have attracted the tech industry are those with the best public transit to allow the workforce to get there."

"So that's very attractive to employers who want to locate to these smaller towns. If there's a transit link it's far more attractive to them."

While it's too early to determine fares, Weal says like their downtown Calgary service there will be a variety of options available, like monthly passes, books of 10 passes and daily fares.

Last night, town council voted 4-2 in favour of awarding the on-demand local transit service to Southland and their added-value of commuter service was seen as a plus.