Councillors should say no to HSR running LRT

Saying yes would be a vote for more delays and costly risks to local taxpayers

The good thing about the cancellation of Friday’s special LRT meeting is it might give councillors a chance to consult their courage instead of their fears. Believe me, some need to. When councillors voted in August to ask the province to let city-owned Hamilton Street Railway run the $1 billion light rail system instead of a private company, a good handful parked their qualms and beliefs and went along with the prevailing union pressures and fear-mongering about privatization.

The result was the project was delayed for another four months. Combine that with the two months lost over the environmental assessment report and LRT is already six months behind its original timelines, which can’t help but create uncertainty about the project as election season draws ever closer.

There’s simply no understanding why it took Metrolinx and its provincial masters so long to cough up an answer to council’s, admittedly, delinquent request.

Everyone knew the province would say nyet to the linked appeal for control of maintenance.

But many suspected they’d leave the door open to HSR operating the system since precedents were set in Ottawa and Toronto.

Presumably some of the delay is attributable to timing. The province could hardly green light the request while HSR was in the throes of a very public drubbing over noshow buses, runaway absenteeism, skyrocketing overtime, and declining ridership.

Regardless, the province’s transit agency finally booted the decision back to council, albeit with dire warnings about potential higher operating costs, commercial risks, and another four or five months of delays in tendering the project.

So be it. Now it’s up to councillors to face the facts. To do that, the middle-of-the-roaders need to ignore the Chicken Little warnings about privatization and pressure tactics from Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 107, which obviously has a vested interest in HSR running light rail since its members represent HSR drivers.

If, in fact, council sticks to the original tender model of having a private consortium design, build, finance, operate, and maintain LRT, the system will still be owned by Metrolinx, a provincially controlled Crown Agency. Thus it remains in public hands.

To draw a local analogy, it’s hardly different than Hamilton retaining ownership of the former HECFI entertainment facilities downtown while contracting out operations to Core Entertainment and its parent Spectra.

To push the analogy, if private operations of a public service is so bad as some councillors would have us believe — I’m looking at you Matthew Green — then why does the city contract out half its garbage collection to a private sector operator?

Frankly, privatization is an alarmist red herring.

This has much more to do with trying to lock up all public transit services under one union, ATU Local 107.

I don’t blame Local 107 for trying to expand its membership and reach. What organization doesn’t love a monopoly? After all, if they’re ever in a strike position, they’ll certainly have more negotiating power at their disposal if they can shut down both the city’s bus and light rail service.

Though Local 107 has hardly covered itself in glory during the ongoing HSR crisis, there’s no doubt its members could run LRT given the proper training. But there’s no reason other unions such as the Teamsters or Unifor or CUPE couldn’t do equally as good a job representing LRT workers.

Make no mistake, those workers will certainly be unionized. The reality is, if council votes against turning operations over to HSR, there’s still nothing stopping ATU from trying to organize them. What they want right now, though, is to be awarded exclusive rights ahead of time. Frankly, given recent events neither HSR management nor its union employees deserve to be handed any of this on a silver platter.

In sum, a vote to have HSR run LRT is a vote for more financial risks to local taxpayers, a vote for more delays on tendering the contract, a vote for political scaremongering, and a vote for a union monopoly. Let’s see how many councillors have the courage to say no to that fishy flow.

Andrew Dreschel’s commentary appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. adreschel@thespec.com 905-526-3495 @AndrewDreschel