Bus fares are up again and assistance for low-income riders has been reduced, but Hamilton has plenty of free transit service if you know how to get it and are travelling to the right places at the right time. Those complimentary rides are costing the HSR well over $100,000 a year and some have been going on for over a decade, but the city has never assessed if this is worth the money or even if it encourages more people to switch to transit.
For example, if you’ve bought a Tiger-cat ticket (at least $28) it also will get you a free bus ride to and from the new stadium. That freebee has been in place since 2005 and it costs the city over $5000 per game.
It may help sell tickets for the private owners of the football club, but the benefit to the HSR has never been evaluated. In response to a Freedom of Information request, staff only could point to an “offset agreement” under which “the Tiger Cats conduct game day marketing at the stadium on utilizing the HSR to attend Ti-Cat home games.”
This year, the “Ti-Cat Express” offers nine pre-game trips from downtown, eight from Limeridge Mall, and five each from Eastgate Square and University Plaza in Dundas. Each start point provides parking so football fans can drive to where they get the free bus.
Another no fare service is the Waterfront Shuttle set up seven years ago to support downtown and bay-side businesses. It provides free rides between the central core and Williams Coffee Pub on the waterfront from the end of June to Labour Day. That costs the HSR about $44,000 a year.
Neither the Ti-cat Express nor the Downtown-Waterfront free shuttles have ever had a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the spending serves the public good or if it just benefits private businesses. It has also not been investigated if the monies would be better used to reduce transit fares, especially for the fifth of Hamiltonians who live in poverty.
The latter can apply for one of the 350 half-price monthly HSR passes if they can prove that they have a job and that their income is low enough. But eligibility is determined by an income standard that is ten years out-of-date and budget for that transit assistance program just got squeezed by the fare hikes.
Recently two free buses were provided to take 80 builders, realtors and bankers from Toronto on a tour of Barton and Kenilworth Street in hopes of convincing them to invest in Hamilton. Free shuttles are also provided by HSR for at least a dozen community events including the Rockton, Binbrook and Ancaster fairs, Glanbrook Canada Day, the Winona Peach Festival, Stoney Creek Flag Day, Harvest Picnic, the Veterans Parade and various commercial street festivals such as those held annually in Westdale and on Locke Street.
Many of the shuttles are intended to reduce parking and traffic problems associated with large numbers of people attending a special event. Nearly all, beyond the Ti-Cat and Waterfront ones, are arranged through not-for-profit organizations. The chance to experience the HSR in this way may generate new regular riders, but that result is uncertain because it has never been investigated in Hamilton.
In 2012, with more than a dozen of these shuttles already in operation, city council established a formal approval policy that required staff to report four times a year to the public works committee on how many additional ones were being provided. No reports have ever been filed.
The HSR also doesn’t keep track of what these complimentary services cost. Those shuttle expenditures which are reported do not include the capital costs of purchasing buses or the storage facility on Upper James that the city is seeking $150 million to duplicate.
This month, cash fares on the HSR have jumped to $3.00 – up from $2.55 a little more than a year ago. Monthly adult passes now cost $101.20 – also an increase of over fifteen percent since August of 2015. City council has tentatively agreed to raise fares another 10 cents per ride every year into the future.