The first wave of HSR bus fare increases coming on September first will hit elementary and high school students the hardest. HSR says the increases will make service more reliable but it isn’t planning any new routes before 2017.
Cash fare will climb to $2.75 and passengers using Presto will pay an extra 15 cents per trip. These constitute an approximate 8 percent increase, but purchasers of monthly passes face steeper hikes. The adult monthly pass goes up by $7.60 or nearly 9 percent, while the student passes jump $8.60 per month – a hike of 11.6 percent.
The latter increases don’t apply to university and college students whose fares are negotiated separately with each campus, but they will hit younger students who ride the HSR to and from schools – something happening more often because numerous closures mean schools that are further away.
Seniors also will have to pay more in September – the first increase for them in over 12 years. Their monthly pass will now be $23.50 (up $3) and the annual one climbs to $235 – a rate still far below other Canadian cities which generally offer half-price fares to retirees. A list of fares for several other Ontario communities that was provided to city councillors to justify the increases showed Windsor with the next lowest senior monthly passes at $44 – nearly twice the new seniors rate in Hamilton.
Despite no fare hikes since 2010, the large increases in 2007 and 2008 combined with next month’s jumps mean busing costs have been climbing for Hamiltonians far faster than inflation. The new monthly adult pass represents a 33 percent increase over 2007, and a corresponding 41 percent hike for the student pass price. But in the same period inflation has risen less than 14 percent and wages have stagnated for most workers.
The price jump next month will be repeated again next September according to the resolution adopted by city council earlier this year. Somewhat smaller increases of ten cents a ride are also scheduled for each of 2017 and 2018 followed by “annual fare increases of at least the consumer price index thereafter.”
The fare hikes are intended to raise $6 million over two years to help the HSR in “addressing current system deficiencies” such as leaving passengers at the curb because buses are overloaded and falling behind posted schedules.
The official position of the city is to share HSR operating costs between riders and taxpayers. The staff report recommending the fare hikes declared that “a balanced approach is being proposed whereby transit users and property tax payers share in the burden since transit provides value to both through reduced congestion and delays, positive health, environment and community impacts (1 passenger-km reduces greenhouse gases by 65%), economic development, and social equity.”
However, the entire $6 million budget increase over the next two years is being collected from riders with zero contribution from taxpayers. That’s because the city wants to increase the riders’ share of total expenditures to 50 percent from the current 47 percent. Most North American transit systems set that target much lower, and some Ontario systems such as VIVA in York Region and Grand River Transit in Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge are running at less than 40 percent.
An initial proposal to raise transit taxes by $1.3 million over two years – less than one dollar per household – presented in early February was dropped two weeks later in favour of extracting the entire budget increase from HSR riders. Council also decided to spread the initial fare hikes over two years instead of imposing a 25 cent a ride jump this year.
The fare hike decisions were made before the provincial government’s June confirmation of full funding for a Light Rail Transit corridor between McMaster and the Queenston traffic circle. That didn’t include $300 million for new buses that will be required to expand other parts of the HSR system.