A telephone and online survey has been launched to help collect data to study the possibilities of establishing both regional and local transit for Cochrane.

On-It manager Ettore Lannacito says since launching the survey on June 2 they have already connected with over 450 people and will be conducting a total of 1,200 random telephone surveys in Cochrane, Calgary, Chestermere and Strathmore. That, he suggests, will total over 2,000 when combined with the online submissions received before the survey ends.

The comprehensive survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and it largely asks if and how often you would use the service, where and why, the times of day you travel and how much you are willing to pay.

"We did a test run before we started the actual survey on June 2 and we got 42 responses really quickly and very easily," says Lannacito."It's going extremely well, people are excited about it. They want give their input and their input is important in developing the future service plan."

He says the data collected should be summarized by the end of the month and will be used to help develop the proposed plan.

"We don't want to base what we do on experience and hunches, we want to make sure we can point to quantifiable, realistic data and make sense of that data to help us build the business case for future transit. All that information will allow us to come with a great plan to meet the needs of the residents."

The survey, though, is only the first step in the planning process and would have many hurdles to clear before open houses are held to receive further feedback.

On-It is a transit program of the Calgary Regional Partnership and already has a two-year pilot project underway that connects a number of communities south of Calgary from Monday to Friday with a commuter service.

You can find the online survey link here.