Hamilton’s transit plan

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Hamilton city council has thrown its support behind a 10 year, $300 million transit plan that could derail LRT. The plan calls for 126 new busses, 50 new drivers and a $200 million storage and maintenance facility.

The city’s new transit chief says the improvements are needed to address current defficiencies in Hamilton’s transit system. David Dixon says a shortage of busses means passengers are often left standing at stops while busses pass them by. “We know those numbers they are quite large therefore we need more busses to handle the loads we have on the streets particulary during peak periods.”

Dixon says another problem is the inability of drivers to hit runtimes. “A runtime is the time it takes to get from one point to another one stop to another and if haven’t got those times right partially due to overloading we cannot expect our operators to hit those times and that leads to a dissatisfied customer.”

The most contentious part of the plan is also the most expensive, a $200 million maintenance and storage garage. Dixon says the current facility is at it’s maximum capacity and the Kenilworth site built in the 90’s may be too expensive to retrofit. “If we are going to add roughly 126 busses you need to store them, fuel them clean them make sure fluids are topped up , empty fare boxes and of course you need to inspect them to make sure they are safe each day and repair them when they fail.”

The city will be asking the province for $300 million to fund the plan, that’s on top of $800 million to cover the costs of LRT. The province hasn’t yet said when it will be making a decision