Building an affordable regional transit system in Essex County won't be easy, a consultant hired by the southwestern Ontario municipality to study the issue said Wednesday.

Instead, a transit service linking municipalities within the county will be "a very difficult need to serve," said Dennis Fletcher, of Markham-based ENTRA Consultants.

"It's a large county with small pockets of urban population spread out with long distances in between them," he said. "That makes it very difficult to provide an affordable service."

Finding an affordable service is a key goal of the Regional Transit Study, a $75,000 study aimed at assessing the needs, costs and integration possibilities of a regional public transit system.

At two public meetings held Wednesday at Essex Civic Centre, local residents and business owners told Fletcher and other members of the Regional Transit Study Team that they want to be able to travel within the county for a variety of reasons, he said.

"We're hearing that a lot of people want to get into Windsor, that people want to get from Windsor out into the county, as well, for jobs," he said. "That people need to get into Windsor for services — medical, social, recreational types of services."

Essex County has posted a public transit survey on its website and has left hard copies at its libraries, civic centre and town halls.

The study team, which also includes county staff, is scheduled to submit its report to county officials in December.