Local News

TUG Responds to City's Closed Transit Process

It's time that City Council really, seriously engaged the public in the future of transit.

By Peter Hutton, Last Updated Monday, October 26, 2009

Thanks to everyone who has completed the TUG Transit Vision survey. If you haven't already, there is still time to do so. We will be collecting responses at least until the end of December.

The coming week is an important one for transit. City Council will deliberate on the transit budgets and some major reports on Thursday October 29 at 9:30 AM when it meets in Committee of the Whole at the Sheraton Hotel.

As I write this, only now are the reports of the operational review, an update on the affordable transit pass program, and other suggestions from the HSR about budget being made public.

We at TUG have had information passed to us from various sources so we had some sense on what is coming. Also, the Manager of the HSR has publicly been talking about fare hikes and service cuts since Monday of this week.

However, this is not the kind of process that we think should be involved in these decisions. There should be more notice and earlier access to this kind of extensive information just for starters.

Needless to say the, the two trains - or should I say buses - don't meet, with the Transit Vision survey conveying the need for more service to deal with crowding and poor timing of the buses as well as lots of other adjunct services that would improve the transit experience and meet our city's goals of getting more people on public transit.

Two Important Meetings

In addition to encouraging you to speak your mind by making a deputation or supporting others who will from the gallery of the meeting, we want to invite you to two important meetings.

The first will be on Tuesday night at 7:30 PM at Skydragon Centre on King William Street in downtown Hamilton. This meeting will be to discuss strategy for Thursday and talk further about getting people to participate. We'll summarize the contents of the reports to a greater extent than you will get in the media.

The second meeting is also at Skydragon on November 17 at 7:30 PM, at which we will discuss the aftermath of the city meeting and do some restructuring of the TUG to help us bring in some new people and new ideas ro support the growth of the movement to build not just a good transit system, but a great one in Hamilton.

Time for Real Public Engagement

What we hope to say to council next week is that it's time they really seriously engaged the public in the future of transit, and that now is not the time to pass a status quo budget, or worse to argue amongst themselves about fare increases and/or service cuts.

Decisions need to be postponed until the public has had a real opportunity to digest what these reports are saving and dualogue about creative ways we can deal with the situation.

No one will deny that times are tough. But driving the service further into the ground isn't going to help the local environment or the local economy. A ridership and public that feels that someone actually cares about what they might have to say, can be a powerful tool to developing new solutions.

I hope that you can join us at one or more of these upcoming meetings.