Bus users across the city now can join a riders union to represent their interests and push for solutions to HSR shortcomings and other transit problems. Nearly fifty residents spent their Saturday morning at the inaugural meeting of the Hamilton Transit Riders Union (HTRU) in the central library.
The group’s interim mission statement states that the HRTU “is a democratic organization fighting to preserve, expand and improve the public transportation system in Hamilton and beyond so that everyone has access to safe, accessible, affordable and reliable public transportation.”
The transit advocacy group has been developed over several months by a number of volunteers with the assistance of Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton and District Labour Council. Annual membership fees are just one dollar and low-income riders can provide volunteer time instead.
Ian Borsuk, the Environment Hamilton climate change coordinator who co-chaired the inaugural meeting, stressed that the group’s main focus is on the chronic under-funding of the HSR and that there is “not an issue to do with mis-management” of the transit division. He said the group will campaign in the municipal election to ensure the new council being elected in late October has “a strong mandate to support good transit planning”.
Borsuk noted that both the HSR management and the bus drivers Amalgamated Transit Union local are supportive of the initiative. Notices of Saturday’s meeting were posted on many HSR buses over the last few weeks.
Anna Davey, the other meeting co-chair who was also a key organizer of the Women’s March last year, sees “transit as a social equalizer” essential to a healthy community. “Our goal is simply to give and organize a collective voice to people who have an interest in transit in Hamilton,” she said
Davey introduced other interim executive members include Lance Dingman and Jeanne Mayo. Dingman is a voice for the disabled and also part of the city’s housing and homelessness advisory committee.
Mayo expects to particularly represent older adults including those in rural areas that don’t have HSR service. She is a member of the city’s seniors’ advisory committee as well as the Hamilton Council on Aging. She wants to “extend transit to all parts of Hamilton” to ensure that those in rural areas have transportation “not only for essentials like groceries but also for social and recreational activities” when they are no longer able to drive.
“Social isolation is a big, big factor in poor health outcomes and so if you don’t have access to transit then your probability of becoming more and more socially isolated just rises,” Mayo stressed.
An HSR user from “a place called Dundas” underlined the inadequacy of service to suburban parts of the city. He had gotten on the bus at 9:40 on Saturday morning at University Plaza and reported that “by the time the bus got to Dundurn it was fully packed. You couldn’t fit any more passengers on the bus at all.”
He suggested extending service with the King 1A bus that runs from Eastgate to University Plaza on weekdays, but only goes as far as the downtown GO station after 7 pm and on weekends. “It would be nice if the HSR brought that number 1A bus into Dundas on weekends because the number 5 buses are the only ones coming into Dundas and they are very much crowded, extremely crowded,” he emphasized.
The very limited service to suburban areas is a casualty of the variable transit taxation rates that are a hangover from Hamilton’s amalgamation eighteen years ago. This unique system means residents of the former city of Hamilton pay about three times the transit tax rate as those who live in Dundas, Ancaster, Stoney Creek and Waterdown.
It also means the tax increase for any HSR improvements in one of the former suburbs is borne entirely by that community and consequently is far higher than if the change were shared equally across the city.