HSR director David Dixon led off his comments to council last week with a blunt message that appears to have been lost on all except one councillor. Dixon noted that “Hamilton’s investment in transit service has been low” and represents the “lowest average municipal contribution increase per year.”
He detailed how the “city is lagging behind in all targets” that it had promised to achieve five years ago. By 2011 the annual transit rides per capita was supposed to have climbed to 60 (from the 48.5 reached in 2001) instead of falling to the 45.1 it is currently achieving. Dixon also noted the share of daily trips by walking and cycling was unchanged at six percent instead of climbing to ten percent, and that the share by single-occupant drivers was also virtually unchanged in that fifteen year period instead of falling sharply.
However nearly all the subsequent councillor questions and debate focused on two specific pieces of the city’s transit challenges that were left over from last year’s discussion – the absence of funding for eleven buses promised last year and for a bus maintenance and storage facility that is required if the HSR is to keep up with population growth and perhaps eventually expand HSR services.
The eleven-bus shortfall will cost nearly $7 million to overcome, and Dixon says $5 million is needed now to start work on a bus barn that will cost at least $125 million. He’s proposing borrowing both amounts so the actual addition to the 2016 budget is just $1.4 million in annual debt carrying charges – about $7 per household.
Both shortfalls were on the council table last year but were punted by councillors in the hope that the province would fund those in addition to providing one billion dollars for the LRT. As expected by Dixon and many others, that was a vain hope – and something that Dixon noted has not been offered to any other municipality.
He also admitted that HSR has not yet received 14 other buses being paid for by stiff fare increases imposed last September to “correct system deficiencies” – hikes that will be duplicated this coming September. That didn’t stop Doug Conley and Terry Whitehead from suggesting riders don’t pay their “fair share” of HSR costs.
Those comments were too much for ward three councillor Matt Green who proposed that perhaps it is cars and trucks that aren’t paying enough.
“A modest $60 a year vehicle registration tax would greatly help us with some of our road deficits if we’re going to extend that same logic,” observed Green. “If not, if we view the general levy as a place where we fund transit, and we fund roads on the general levy equal – fair if fair for everybody – then we need to take that argument off the line.”
Green asked how many additional cars have been registered in Hamilton over the last few years. That number doesn’t seem to be easily available, but the total in Ontario goes up over 100,000 a year and has jumped by two-thirds in the last decade, with just under two million added in the last five years.
In those five years, road spending in Hamilton’s capital budget has jumped over $20 million a year – a 37.5% increase – with three quarters of that coming directly out of property taxes. In the same period there has been no additional tax dollars allocated to bus purchases and other HSR capital spending which has remained at $3.7 million a year.
Three million of that comes from the city’s annual federal gas tax share, with the remaining $29 million going to roads. Rather than alter that division, council chose last year to start correcting HSR “system deficiencies” entirely by raising fares an average of 8 to 12 percent in each of 2015 and 2016.
Hamilton’s ten-year strategy approved last year requires another $57 million in bus purchases and has the modest objective of doubling transit’s share of travel over the next decade to 15 percent. It appears a far greater shift will be required if Canada is to come anywhere close to meeting its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction – even the ones promised by Stephen Harper.
Reaching the Harper objective requires cuts of over 200 megatonnes, and Justin Trudeau has promised to do considerably better. Transportation emissions are currently the second largest category at 170 Mt, just below the oil and gas sector which stands at 179 Mt. Both have risen dramatically since 1990 and together made up nearly half of the country’s contribution to climate change in 2013.
There’s an opportunity tomorrow (February 9 from 3-7 pm) to speak directly to councillors about transit and other aspects of the 2016 budget in a special session set aside to hear resident comments.