[thistleclub]

HSR ridership inches up – after four years of decline
(Hamilton Spectator, Matthew Van Dongen, Jan 25 2018)

Hamilton's bus ridership inched upward last year for the first time since the city starting spending in earnest on a longterm HSR improvement strategy in 2015.

But some councillors say that's hardly reason to celebrate, given the city originally hoped to be serving an extra 2 million riders annually by now, under that 10-year strategy.

The city recorded about 21,522,000 rides on HSR buses in 2018, about a one-percent increase over the previous year. That's the first year-over-year growth since ridership numbers peaked at 22,250,052 in 2014.

Transit director Debbie Dalle Vedove called the improvement a "direct result" of council's commitment to continuing yearly spending to improve service – minus a "pause" in 2017 – outlined in the longterm strategy.

Dalle Vedove is recommending pursuing "Year 4" of the strategy in 2019, which includes an extra $1.8 million for service frequency improvements on the already-busy B Line as well as Mountain-to-downtown routes like 21 Upper Kenilworth, 20 A-line and 22 Upper Ottawa, for example.

Those improvements would mostly come online late in the year –alongside a proposed 10 cent fare hike in September. Overall, the proposed transit budget would jump14 percent, thanks in large part to an unbudgeted surge in demand for DARTS accessibile transit trips last year.

Don't count on Coun. Lloyd Ferguson to support the transit budget boost, however.

He said the numbers presented suggest the 10-year HSR strategy is "a miserable failure" and added he wants to "slam the brakes" on the rest of the spending plan until it is reviewed.

The Ancaster councillor argued the city's longterm transit plan originally envisioned ridership reaching 23,500,000 by now. Instead, it dropped "every year until now." Over that time, the city has added 30 new buses and 70-plus new drivers to variously fix service issues and, more recently, start to grow service or improve frequency.

On the other hand, the city was also forced to deal with an infamous no-show bus crisis in 2017 that at once point included 23 bus cancellations a day because no drivers were available. A hiring spree in 2018 eventually ended the mass cancellations, but it's unclear exactly how the problems affected ridership numbers.

Much of the new spending on HSR in recent years have been aimed at fixing problems in the system.…

The original staff author of the longterm strategy, former director Dave Dixon, also warned council in 2015 that fare hikes used to pay for improved service would inevitably slow ridership growth. Fares were slated to jump .30 cents over the first two years of the strategy and another .10 cent hike is forecast this year.

The next phase of the city's transit strategy is supposed to focus on growing the service. A majority of the planned frequency and service improvements this year are aimed at routes serving the Mountain, for example.

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