The city's handy bus is back on the road to country residential areas of Whitehorse after council voted to reinstate the service at Monday night's council meeting.

'I think from day one, this one took me by surprise that we had actually cut it,' Mayor Ernie Bourassa said in an interview after the meeting.

In cutting the city's conventional bus system last July, council also reduced handy bus service, a door-to-door pickup system for people with disabilities.

The changes cut or combined routes, raised fares and lengthened the waiting time between buses during hours when they aren't heavily used, such as early mornings and late afternoons.

Eliminating the country residential service meant handy bus service to those areas was removed as well.

The move came out of a human rights complaint in 2000 which determined service for both systems must be similar.

Bourassa isn't worried council's vote Monday night could lead to complaints from conventional transit users who lost service in country residential areas.

'It's not a regularly-scheduled service,' he said of the handy bus. 'It's an on-demand service. It may be once a month (the handy bus) happens to go out there.'

At the Feb. 3 council meeting, Jon Breen of the Yukon Council on Disability (YCD) told council the handy bus should serve country residential areas of the city because of the limited options faced by people with disabilities.

People in wheelchairs can't hitchhike, he noted as an example.

Breen also proposed the city work with the YCD to look at funding another alternative service for disabled people living in country residential areas. The service could potentially be delivered through the YCD, he said.

At Monday night's meeting, council also voted to work with the newly-formed handy bus committee to evaluate the number of users in country residential areas and determine the implications of providing service in those regions.

As Coun. Dave Stockdale pointed out, the city was voting to offer country residential service without first looking at the implications of things like cost.

Coun. Doug Graham said he had similar concerns, noting that in some areas of the city, it may not always be possible to provide service.

'But I think, in theory, that all of us agree that wherever handy bus service can possibly be provided, we should be providing it,' he said.

Graham then proposed the recommendation that the handy bus policy read 'Whitehorse Transit shall provide the handy bus service within the municipal boundaries of the city' be changed so that handy bus service be provided 'whenever possible' within the boundaries of Whitehorse.

Council voted in favour of the amendment, followed by a vote in favour of the new proposal.