A parade of public transit users offered their advice on how to overhaul the city's bus system yesterday, but members of the transit task force are still mum on which model they favour.

"The committee really isn't leaning one way or the other," said Coun. Russ Wyatt, who chairs the task force. "We haven't sat down as a group and had a frank discussion of our views yet."

Yesterday, during all-day hearings held behind closed doors, the task force heard from disabled activists, the Downtown and Exchange District biz groups and union leaders. Representatives from Winnipeggers for Bus Rapid Transit, a group formed last fall to save BRT, also made their pitch.

On the schedule today are student leaders from the city's two universities, the Manitoba Society of Seniors, the Manitoba Home Builders and staff from the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

The task force has also hosted five to 10 public meetings scattered throughout the city. Wyatt said between 40 and 60 people attended each of the first five, many offering positive feedback on the kindness of bus drivers and the usefulness of new initiatives like the Internet trip-planner called Naviga. But Winnipeggers have also noticed faltering service, said Wyatt.

"People have noticed a change for the worse in the last 10 to 15 years," said Wyatt. "We used to have express routes that ran every four, five, six minutes, but now thre are 20-minute delays between buses. It's like the city has taken the same amount of butter and spread it so thinly on the bread that pretty soon you won't taste the butter."

The public meetings have drawn some criticism because the task force members don't begin by laying out a series of rapid transit options. That means discussions tend to focus more on the failures of the current system instead of a broader vision for rapid transit.

But Wyatt said the point of the first round of consultations was to find out what people value in a transit system.

The task force is focusing on three main options: a light-rail system, a network of high-speed bus corridors or a host of improvements to the existing system.

Those improvements could be new buses or diamond lanes on busy streets to speed buses past traffic jams, but Wyatt said there's some debate about whether that qualifies as a rapid transit system that would really increase ridership.

Mayor Sam Katz said he favours a light-rail system. That has some councillors, including Donald Benham, fearing the task force will side with the mayor, leaving the city with a multibillion-dollar price tag it can't afford.

Benham, a die-hard supporter of bus-based-rapid transit, has repeatedly called the task force a waste of time and money. Years of city studies have favoured BRT and the city already had $34 million in federal and provincial funding to begin building the system's first phase, connecting the University of Winnnipeg, to the University of Manitoba.

That money was handed back to the federal and provincial governments last fall when Katz cancelled BRT. The mayor hopes the cash will be redirected into the city's recreation centres.