What is going on at the HSR?
Flatlining ridership Increasing fares Pressure on taxpayers
Bus ridership in Hamilton is primed to drop for a second straight year as the HSR struggles to improve transit service ahead of a planned $1-billion LRT line.
THE TREND OF FEWER butts in the bus coincides with a second year of fare hikes — a revenue boost ironically aimed at fixing problems that discourage users, like full buses that don’t stop for irate would-be riders.
The decline also mirrors a recent national trend of flatlining or shrinking ridership that has been blamed on everything from cheaper gas to ride-hailing services like Uber.
Local bus users and advocates, however, argue the HSR has been spinning its wheels on both ridership and actual local transit spending for a decade.
“If you really want to improve transit and lure riders, fare hikes alone are not enough to get it done,” said Michael Nabert of Environment Hamilton, which is helping organize a petition designed to convince council to invest more in the HSR. It might be a hard sell. City council is eyeing possible budget cuts going into 2017 to stave of the threat of a potential six per cent average tax hike.
At the same time, other levels of government are preparing to pour unprecedented transit dollars into Hamilton. That includes a planned $1-billion light rail transit line promised by the province and due to begin construction in 2019 as well as $36 million from the federal government the city wants to put toward a new bus barn.
But very little of that cash will actually add new or more frequent bus service in the short term — and both fans and opponents of the city’s ambitious LRT plan agree Hamilton needs to ramp up local bus service ahead of the project.
The city’s own Rapid Ready report recommends ramping up operating spending by $45 million and capital spending by $156 million on the HSR in advance of shiny new trains whizzing through the lower city.
That’s a tall order, given city
spending on transit has only inched up from $58 to $65 per person since 2006. That’s one of the lowest increases over time among comparator cities.
Over that same decade, city ridership has stalled around 21 million, while the number of trips per person actually dropped from 47 to 45.
To be fair, communities that have roared ahead with double-digit ridership percentage hikes over the last decade, such as Waterloo and Ottawa, have also seen a more recent levelling off or even dip in annual rides.
Hamilton approved a 10-year local transit strategy in 2015 designed to incrementally improve and expand HSR service, with the eventual plan to send express buses zooming up Mountain routes and to suburban communities where service frequency is now poor.
Officials acknowledged the risk of losing riders due to fare hikes when they pitched the strategy, but argued visibly improved service would offset the loss over time. As of October, the HSR had given about 200,000 fewer rides than by that time last year.
So far, the plan’s contentious fare hikes are paying off – if slowly – in the battle against overcrowding on buses, said new transit director Debbie Dalle Vedove.
Two years ago, city buses were averaging more than 900 so-called “pass-bys” per month, with the worst months sometimes reaching double that figure. After the first year of fare-hike-sponsored service improvement – primarily new buses and drivers on the busy B-line – the monthly average for 2015 dropped to 800. It hit around 740 by the end of April 2016.
“It is an improvement, but we’d like to get better,” said Dalle Vedove, who is preparing an update report for councillors ahead of a pivotal transit budget meeting in late January.
The numbers may look better on a stats sheet, but the change is still hard to see at the bus stop, said lifelong HSR rider Eric Gillis.
“I’m still being left behind. It’s not uncommon to see, especially near McMaster (University),” said the 24-year-old, who made an impassioned plea for councillors to support LRT at a recent committee meeting. “If you really need to get somewhere on time along that corridor, you need to plan two buses ahead of what is scheduled.”
Gillis recalls watching helplessly – and sometimes, “swearing angrily under my breath” – as overcrowded buses flashing the “bus full” sign roared by him in the winter as he stood, groceries in arms.
“I’ve missed (university) classes, I’ve been late for work, for job interviews because of it,” said Gillis, who depended on the HSR for all his transportation when he was growing up.
Gillis now works downtown for a web design agency and owns his own car but still prefers to bus.
“But you’re never going to grow the service if you keep treating the people who use it like second-class citizens,” he said.
The city is adding buses and hiring new drivers, mostly via the extra money raised through fare hikes, although the drop in riders could leave the HSR short almost $1 million in revenue, according to a report.
Here are a few of the ways council could find more cash for transit:
Federal gas tax
Right now, the city receives $30 million or so a year in federal gas tax. Only a fraction of that amount is spent on transit, with the bulk dedicated to roads. Environment Hamilton suggests spending more of the gas tax on buses – but city budget gurus estimate we already underspend on roads and bridges by $120 million a year.
Area rating
Right now, Hamilton is one of the only Ontario municipalities where different parts of the city pay varying amounts of taxes toward transit – or nothing at all in rural areas – based on the frequency of bus service.
Ending the variation, at least in urban amalgamated Hamilton, would net the city almost another $11 million a year it could use to expand or upgrade service. But most councillors have already made clear they have no desire to debate the issue this term.
Fare hikes
Council approved two years of fare hikes starting in 2016. The long-term HSR strategy proposes a 10 cent hike every year through 2018, with future increases tied to the rate of inflation. Transit planners acknowledge a one per cent increase in fares can cut ridership by up to half a per cent.
Tax increases
The city rarely taps local taxpayers directly for new cash to run its bus system, with most new bus purchases coming from gas tax money. But taxpayers paid an extra $1.2 million in 2014 to beef up frequency and weekend service on some Mountain routes. Most of the $6 million added to the budget over the last two years came from fare hikes.
Grants
The city is eyeing an anticipated $36 million in dedicated transit grants to help pay for a head-start on a bus barn needed to house future express buses that council hopes will one day whiz up and across the Mountain. But most government transit grants are aimed at vehicles, equipment and infrastructure, not annual spending hikes.