Beyond LRT: What transit issue will drive your vote in Hamilton’s city election?

Mike Regan gave up on both his new job and Waterdown's on-demand" bus service after a cancelled HSR ride left him stranded" and forced to walk seven kilometres home from work.

The 64-year-old had plenty of time to mull his decision to quit, because it took more than an hour to trudge down the Mountain on a muggy July evening from Clappison's Corners to Plains Road - where the angry, exhausted" worker then caught a regular, fixed-route bus home to downtown Hamilton.

That was the second evening in two weeks Regan said a booked My Ride trip did not arrive to pick him up - or at least, not at the stop he expected. The first time, he complained and another bus was sent to collect him.

But on July 18, Regan said when he called the city for help he was told no other bus was available. So he walked - making a futile attempt to flag down a passing HSR bus along the way.

It was horrendous ... (and) it cost me a job," said Regan, who believes the city should scrap its ride-hailing experiment and invest in more frequent fixed-route service to the growing Waterdown employment area. I was doing janitorial service. I can't afford to take a cab when that happens."

The city said its records indicate Regan's ride was cancelled because his original preferred pickup point was shifted to a nearby location, apparently unbeknownst to the fuming would-be rider.

The shared-ride transit pilot often readjusts bus routes in real time, which means exact pickup spots and times can shift, said HSR transit planning manager Jason VanderHeide. Customers are supposed to be able to track changes via smartphone. We recognize ... it has been a big change for customers," he said.

The pilot has spurred complaints, but also earned fans. Of around 32,000 trips delivered in the last year, about 5,000 spurred online reviews - with more than 80 per cent considered positive," VanderHeide said.

The Waterdown transit dilemma touches on several of the biggest transit questions facing candidates in the looming Oct. 24 city election.

• How can the city successfully expand bus service to growing suburban communities where the car is king?

• With ridership in a pandemic rut, are alternatives like ride-hailing buses part of the solution?

• And whatever the city does to improve the HSR, who should pay the bill?

Those are thorny questions - but they do mark a refreshing change from Hamilton's typical Groundhog Day" election debates over light rail transit.

For the first election in years, LRT is not the central issue," said Karl Andrus of the Hamilton Transit Riders' Union. I'm elated to see conversations about transit moving beyond just yes or no' to LRT."

That's a big change from elections in 2014 and 2018 - both of which featured serious candidates campaigning to kill the 14-kilometre light-rail transit plan for the lower city in favour of building bus rapid transit.

The city's transit union still wants to make an election issue out of LRT - particularly, over whether the city will operate the train instead of a private consortium like the one running the LRT in Kitchener-Waterloo, said vice-president Rob Doucette. We want to hear specifically if (candidates) will commit to keep public transit in public hands."

But unlike in past elections, no major mayoral candidate is openly campaigning against LRT - likely in part due to $3.4-billion in new federal and provincial funding for the project. Major construction is supposed to start by 2024.

That means candidates can move beyond" the yes or no LRT question to explaining to voters how they would make the entire transit system better for residents, said Andrus.

He said that includes expanding bus service to underserved suburban communities like Binbrook, Waterdown and Stoney Creek - and finally moving ahead on a nearly 15-year-old BLAST" rapid transit vision for the rest of the city.

The grassroots riders' union argues all those improvements require an overhaul of Hamilton's bizarre" system of taxing different areas of the city more or less for transit. That debate over ending so-called area rating" of transit could prove just as controversial as past LRT battles, Andrus conceded.

In the mayor's race, everyone has kind of run away from that issue," he suggested.

There are any number of transit issues that could drive your vote on Oct. 24.

Here's a selection:

Free bus fare?

The idea of fare-free transit got a political boost during the COVID-19 pandemic as cities searched for ways to ease financial hardship for residents - and also coax virus-wary riders back onto the bus. (In Hamilton, ridership this year is expected to fall about 25 per cent short of pre-pandemic numbers.)

Free transit advocacy groups are popping up in major Canadian cities (the Hamilton Transit Riders' Union also backs the idea) and dozens of cities around the world are experimenting with limited or temporary versions of no-fare rides. For example, Calgary's C-Train has a fare free zone" in the downtown.

During the pandemic, Hamilton temporarily adopted free fares for kids aged six to 12 (younger children already travelled free) and the city has long offered a golden age" pass for residents over the age of 80.

That's still a long way from giving up $40-million-plus in annual transit revenue each year and asking taxpayers to make up the shortfall, of course.

So far, no major mayoral candidate is pitching totally fare-free bus travel. But Keanin Loomis has said he'd like to look at free bus rides for those who could use it most," like seniors and students in middle or high school, for example.

Transit taxes

Area rating" of taxes sounds like a boring bureaucratic argument - but the question of how and who Hamilton taxes for bus service can really fire up political debate (and taxpayer ire).

A short summary of a two-decade argument: When Hamilton amalgamated suburban communities like Ancaster, Binbrook, Waterdown, Dundas and Stoney Creek in 2001, it created different tax rates for transit based on level of service and old geographical boundaries.

Meant as a temporary measure, the geography-based tax rates never disappeared - leaving Hamilton as the only large Ontario city where urban residents pay different rates for transit depending on where they live.

So in 2019, for example, the average old-city homeowner paid about $389 a year for transit compared to $184 for the urban parts of Ancaster, $201 for Glanbrook and $137 in Stoney Creek. Rural residents pay no taxes for transit.

Forcing all urban residents across Hamilton to pay the same transit tax rate should result in a tax cut for the old city and a hike of between two and four per cent in former amalgamated communities.

But Andrus suggests the city could skip the old-city tax cut, with extra money raised plowed directly back into improving transit" in poorly served areas.

Otherwise, he argued the current system makes it difficult to expand transit to where it is needed - and unfair to old-city residents who shoulder the brunt of HSR budget increases.

It's the kind of conundrum that has split council along urban-suburban lines in the past - with retiring Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson, for example, at one point threatening to withdraw his support for LRT if council changed transit taxes in a way that hurt his ward residents.

Light rail transit

Wait, didn't we say the light rail debate is over? Well ... sort of.

No major mayoral candidate is actively campaigning on a promise to kill LRT.

Past mayor Bob Bratina remains personally opposed - and he effectively quit as a Liberal MP over his government's support for Hamilton's light rail project. But Bratina has also publicly said it's time to move forward" on the project, which now has both provincial and federal funding.

Serious mayoral candidates like former NDP leader Andrea Horwath and past chamber of commerce head Keanin Loomis are both vocal champions of the planned LRT - and also looking ahead to new rapid transit expansions.

But if raging inflation doesn't derail or delay LRT, the project could still be tripped up by the debate over who runs it. Hamilton has agreed to pay operations and maintenance costs for the 14-kilometre line between McMaster University and Eastgate Square - but it remains unclear whether the city will pay its own employees or a private company to run the train.

Hamilton's original LRT project - the one cancelled by Ontario in December 2019 over budget woes - was supposed to be designed, built, operated and maintained by a private consortium. But project manager Metrolinx has indicated it is open to discussing other possibilities for the resurrected LRT 2.0.

On-demand transit

Hamilton scrapped a woeful fixed-route bus loop in Waterdown during the pandemic to experiment with an Uber-like ride-hailing service that uses shorter (but still 30-feet-long) HSR buses.

The on-demand" pilot project was meant to wrap up in September, but will extend into next year while the city studies results from an experiment that delivered 32,000 rides in a year, said VanderHeide, the HSR planning manager.

Evaluating those numbers against past fixed-route service is tough, he noted, because the experiment happened during the pandemic, when overall bus use plunged as much as 70 per cent.

The next council could decide to scrap the experiment - or expand it to other underserved urban outposts.

Among mayoral candidates, Bratina has said he is interested in testing alternatives like on-demand transit in other areas. Loomis noted in an interview he has heard many complaints from Waterdown residents about the service, however.

Voting advice

Need voting help from the transit professionals?

The union for municipal transit workers in Hamilton suggests you vote for Bob Bratina - and also Andrea Horwath.

Oddly, the Amalgamated Transit Union's national body came out with a thumbs-up for the former NDP leader the same week its Hamilton arm, Local 107, publicly endorsed the former mayor, Bratina.

Mayoral candidates on transit

Keanin Loomis

• Supports planned LRT, open to exploring both public and private models of operation to ensure best value" for taxpayers and riders.

• Proposes phasing out area-rated transit taxes over time," in tandem with plans for expanded service.

• Proposes free transit for seniors and students through middle, high school.

Bob Bratina

• Personally disagrees with LRT plan but says city must move forward" with trains run by unionized HSR workers.

• Calls ending area-rated transit a tax grab" but wants to experiment with alternative transit like on-demand service in suburbs.

• Proposes diverting all gas tax revenue to transit.

Andrea Horwath

• Supports planned LRT and backs idea of unionized, HSR-run service.

• Says transit must expand to all suburban communities but says any changes to area-rated taxes must happen in tandem with improved service. Has not suggested a timeline for changes.

• Proposes transitioning to low carbon" bus fleet.