No more talking, fix the HSR this year

No one at Hamilton city hall can credibly claim to be surprised by the sorry state of the HSR.

An absenteeism problem that has led to driver shortages. Missed pickups, underserviced routes, ongoing labour/management problems, including a public vote of non-confidence by unionized workers.

The HSR is a mess. No one involved completely evades responsibility for this. But the buck stops at the people who operate the system. That’s city council.

You can trace the root of these problems back years. Experts on the subject could no doubt point to a series of signposts clearly indicating the direction HSR was headed. But from a macro, as opposed to micro, perspective, the problem comes down to this. City councils, not just this one but its predecessors, have been good about talking the talk about the importance of transit investment, but not so good about walking that talk.

Faced with mountains of competing priorities, councils too often have decided on things other than transit. They’ve known full well that eventually the evolution of the city would demand elevated, modern transit far beyond what HSR is escapable of. But for various reasons, they have allowed transit to languish.

That has to stop and this needs to be the year it does. Once LRT construction is on the doorstep as opposed to down the road a bit, it will dominate nearly every other issue, certainly around transit. That means council needs to finally get back into gear on improving HSR, and must do so in 2018.

Happily, that appears to be happening, at least so far. While final budget decisions have not been made, the city so far plans to increase its transit budget by 10 per cent — part of the funding for that will come from a 10 cent fare hike.

Service upgrades that should have been implemented last year but were booted down the road will be put in place, in line with the city’s 10-year transit strategy. It, too, was put on hold last year because council said it needed federal investment commitment before moving forward on improvements. Bad call, but that’s history now.

Now buses will be added. More drivers will be hired, which should address the understaffing and burnout often cited by the Amalgamated Transit Union as reasons for the absenteeism crisis, now sitting at an unacceptable 18 or 19 per cent per week.

The long-neglected HSR can’t be fixed in a year. But its trajectory must change. LRT alone isn’t, and never was, the holistic answer for improved transit in Hamilton. It’s a critical piece, arguably even the centrepiece, but it won’t achieve its potential unless HSR is robust and reliable.

That’s the vision in the transit strategy as well as the Rapid Ready blueprint, which provides a longer term vision. Council has to get back on this track, not at some point in the future, but now.