A low-budget two-year study by the HSR and McMaster to “re-envision transit” may be another attempt to convince bus riders that something is being done to fix a badly discredited system. It comes in the wake of dubious city claims about much the city has invested in the transit system as well as new HSR bus ads that tell riders that “you’re important to us”.
Needing the $100,000 McMaster study announced last week also implies that the city’s signature ten-year transit strategy adopted in 2015 must have been missing something important. Fixing system deficiencies was the stated objective of the first two years of the strategy that are already supposed to be completed.
The new study promises to utilize “world class researchers” to conduct a “systematic review of Hamilton’s transit network” and find out what its riders want. It will include gathering input from riders and other residents.
“We’re going to find out if we’re servicing the right areas of the city, if we’re running buses to when and where our customers need to go, and find out how we can improve our routes, destinations and time tables,” declared transit director Debbie Della Vedove.
Those ambitious objectives were accompanied by acknowledgement from public works head Dan McKinnon that “there are many areas of the city that we don’t service or don’t service frequently.” Changing that would appear to require an end to council’s chronic underfunding of the HSR.
A mid-March update from the HSR claims that has happened and that major city investments have been underway for years. For example it states there was “a $6 million operating investment” in 2015 and 2016 “focused on adding capacity and addressing system deficiencies”. But it neglects to explain that those monies didn’t come from city coffers but were collected from steep fare increases imposed in those two years.
Similarly the update points to an “an operating increase of $3.4 million per year” approved last month. The actual figure in 2018 is $1.8 million because it won’t start until half way into this year. And the update doesn’t mention the imposition of another fare hike this coming September that presumably will also help pay for this “investment”.
“It’s clear that Hamilton city council is committed to improving transit in Hamilton,” continues the update. “Over the past eight years, council has supported more than $219 million in capital and operating investments that have translated to almost 150,000 new service hours, 110 additional staff and 46 more buses, and almost 250,000 trips on DARTS.”
How much of this went to HSR and how much to DARTS is not spelled out. However details about the $219 million can be found in the HSR’s 2018 capital budget presentation which showed that less than $5 million (2 percent) came from city taxes. Other sources for these “investments” include $36 million from federal gas taxes and $66 million from other senior government “subsidies”, as well as $35 million in debt financing. Funding from reserves and development charges make up the rest.
These investment claims also form a key part of the “you’re important to us” advertising that began appearing last month on HSR buses. They are a rare example of transit marketing in Hamilton, but instead of trying to attract new users to a system that has suffered ridership declines in six of the last ten years these ads are focused on convincing existing riders that the HSR is doing a good job.
One obvious measure that would increase transit funding from city taxes is a reform of the area rating system that sees the residents of the former suburban communities paying about a third of the transit tax rate as those who live in the old city of Hamilton. That hangover from amalgamation 18 years ago has meant suburban residents get far less service and some bus routes don’t make sense.
For example, the heavily used Barton (number 2) route with seven minute frequency still ends at the former border of Stoney Creek near Gray’s Road. Passengers who want to continue along Barton to Mohawk College or jobs in the industrial park must transfer to a service that only runs every 30 minutes. Dundas and Ancaster residents face similar low frequency service and discontinuous connections.