Despite plans to collect an extra $6 million from riders in fare hikes, the HSR faces significant obstacles to improving transit service to the former suburbs. Council’s decision to continue the variable transit tax rate system limits HSR funding and also appears to block the completion of the bus system in other parts of the city.
The controversial area rating tax system sank the two most recent HSR improvement proposals and appears to be preventing several other necessary changes from even being considered by transit management. That has left the main growth areas of the city without adequate bus service and perpetuated divisions between the six former municipalities amalgamated 15 years ago.
The most recent casualty was this year’s cancellation of service to Binbrook, the fastest growing residential area in Hamilton. A pilot trans-cab service established two years ago was shut down in January because residents of the booming suburb balked at the steep tax hike required to keep it.
The $225,000 one-year pilot initiated in 2013 offered no weekend service and only limited evening taxi connections to one mountain HSR route, but staff considered the take up of over 20 rides per day sufficient to justify extension of the service to at least June of this year. That extension required no additional cash, but making it permanent would have raised taxes an average of $88 per household in Binbrook and that was too much for the majority of residents who voted it down in January, leading to cancelation in mid-February.
The steep price is because the area rating system requires all costs of new service to suburban areas be paid entirely by that suburb. If the costs were shared across the whole city, it would be less than 50 cents per person. Similar value service improvements within the old city of Hamilton have minimal effects on taxes because they are cost-shared across a much larger population.
Cross-mountain Rymal 44 service improvements last year were rejected for the same reason – a $14 per household tax increase in Ancaster because part of the route goes through that former suburb. Lloyd Ferguson convinced a majority of his council colleagues to turn down changes that would have created half hour service on weekdays and weekends along the whole route between Ancaster and Eastgate Mall.
Other oddities in HSR service appear unfixable for the same reason. The Barton bus, for example, provides seven minute service along that major artery, but only to the former border of Stoney Creek where riders have to transfer to a bus that only comes twice an hour – an obvious problem for students at the Mohawk College campus and employees of the large Stoney Creek industrial zone.
At the other end of the city, there are only part-day buses serving the explosive growth in Waterdown, and no HSR connection to the rest of Hamilton, leaving riders forced to rely on a Burlington bus to make the connection. Dundas passengers also suffer much less HSR service than their neighbours in the western end of the former city of Hamilton.
Waterdown, like Binbrook, is experiencing explosive residential growth, while Ancaster and Stoney Creek are adding the majority of new jobs in Hamilton – but all have limited HSR service. And changing that means large tax hikes specific to those former suburbs whose average contribution to the HSR currently is less than a third of that paid by residents of the old city. That leaves suburban residents less able to connect, but also limits the ability of HSR riders from other parts of the city to access the underserviced suburbs.
Transit officials have long argued that bus service must be installed early in growth areas so that new residents can avoid buying a second, third or fourth vehicle to compensate for no other transportation alternatives. And once those cars are bought, converting those residents to transit becomes much more difficult.
The two-year transit strategy adopted last month by council to address “HSR deficiencies” avoids changes to suburban service entirely. Fifteen routes are scheduled for improvements but none serve a former suburb. A newly constituted citizen’s panel originally focused on rapid transit options has also been asked to review area rating, but that addition barely got through a deeply divided council vote that say all suburban representatives opposed.