Overhaul of public transit system a win for city

After years of neglect, council steps up with financial commitment to transit

In 1886, the first electric street railway in Canada began operating, in Windsor.

Five years later, Windsor’s entire transit system was electric, another first.

And in 1922, the first trolley bus in Canada began operating, also here, in Walkerville.

Now, almost a century later — and after years of neglect — there’s been a reawakening, at least when it comes to public transit. City council has approved a massive overhaul that will double bus service in eight years.

It’s one of the most significant decisions this council will make. Public transit is fundamental, something that cities do, period — like sewers, libraries and parks. It connects our community, getting people to jobs, schools, shopping and everywhere they need to go.

But council’s decision is only the beginning.

The new plan calls for Windsor to double its public transit budget from $35 million to $70 million in eight years starting next year and spend $135 million for more buses, new and expanded terminals and bus stops and a new or expanded garage.

Fares and gas tax revenue will pay for part of the increased operating budget, and senior governments will pay for much of the capital costs.

Still, this is a lot of money.

And council must still approve the money. Each council, each year, will have to approve the money — $1.6 million more in 2021, $3.1 million in 2022, $7.1 million in 2023, $3.6 million in 2024, $9.7 million in 2025. That’s $25 million more in the first five years.

Coun. Fred Francis wants flexibility. What if the city faces unexpected challenges? Taxes will rise steeply for some people next year after property values are reassessed.

Those are valid points.

But, said Coun. Kieran Mckenzie, chairman of the transit advisory committee, “there would have to be a very significant thing come forward for me to deviate from the plan. They need to proceed.”

This council this year proved its commitment, approving $872,000 to add 136 hours of service every Sunday, a 50 per cent increase.

That’s the kind of resolve this council and the next two councils will need, every year.

Windsor provides less service that multiple peer cities across Canada, just over an hour per capita compared to up to two hours in Kingston.

We spend less per capita,

$58.61. Kingston spends more than double that, Guelph and Saskatoon almost double.

Yet the city is growing, and as the plan states, there is a “new wave” of support in society and government for public transit. Senior governments are providing hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for it.

It’s time, time to become a real city.

For the plan to work, Transit Windsor will have to provide the whole “package,” as operations manager Steve Habrun called it — more frequent, longer, faster service, starting where people live and going where they go.

It’s a mess now. Nine of the 14 routes are underutilized. One is overutilized. Ten routes start, end or travel through downtown, but less than 10 per cent of all trips by any mode of transportation go downtown during the morning commute.

There are little things, too. There are a lot of houses with a lot of high school students near Provincial Road and Sixth Concession.

But the bus stop is on an unpaved shoulder. So parents drive their kids to school.

“They’d (parents) be happy to let them take the bus if they could get them to the bus stop safely,” Mckenzie said.

About five per cent of people in Windsor ride a bus regularly. The goal is for 10 per cent of all trips to be by bus by 2031, only 11 years.

There’s a correlation between service and the number of riders, said Habrun. Better service, more riders.

But Transit Windsor will also have to change the way people see the bus. More students than adults ride the bus here. But if you think only people who can’t afford a car ride a bus, you’re a dinosaur.

Values are changing, as the consultants wrote. Who wants to ride the bus now? People who understand that we must reduce carbon emissions that threaten Earth’s climate, who understand that we can no longer design cities around cars, that we can’t afford to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fix roads and people who don’t want to use swaths of valuable land for parking.

About 650 city employees downtown get discounted parking passes as part of their contract.

They pay only a third of the cost to park in a city garage and only half the cost to park in a lot. What about discounted bus passes instead?

It will soon be cheaper for the public to buy a monthly bus pass compared to a monthly parking pass for a city garage. But it will still be cheaper to park in a city lot than ride a bus. Why?

Many parents still help their kids buy cars to get to the University of Windsor — even though student fees include a bus pass.

A bus system is about a lot more than buses, as the consultants wrote. It’s “an integral component” of a livable, sustainable community.