Hamilton LRT will change city life for students, so why aren’t we making our voices heard?

As debates over the future of the 14km rapid transit route continue
to colour Hamilton’s civic politics, McMaster students are remarkably silent

By: Declan Whithers, Opinion Contributor

On April 17, I joined 17 other citizens at Hamilton City Hall to make our voices heard on City Council’s decision of who would be managing and staffing the upcoming light rail transit system. The Hamilton LRT project has been in the works for decades with a bit of a rocky history. The new transit system is a collaborative project between Ontario’s crown transit service Metrolinx and the city of Hamilton.

This issue of management turned out to be a non-issue. Metrolinx’s board, not the city, has the final decision on the operations model. The whole meeting was a farce, meant to appear like a democratic undertaking while most of the council never intended to follow the democratic will for keeping transit public. Most of the council and city staff agreed with Metrolinx’s inevitable decision to cut the Hamilton Street Railway — and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 107 — out of operations in favour of a private contractor.

While I doubt any more public outcry would have changed the council’s decision, the lack of representation by McMaster students and the McMaster Students Union is concerning. The LRT system will deeply impact the student experience, so it’s imperative that our voice be heard and accounted for throughout its development. There are three major areas of concern for McMaster students: reliability, bus passes and possible HSR service cuts.

Reliability is key to public transit. Students need to be able to rely on service being, if not frequent, at least reliable so they can get to campus on time for their classes and other commitments. If you can only catch a bus every hour, you can still plan your day around the transit schedule. Off-schedule buses, especially for students with multiple short transfer windows, make transit an infeasible option.

In the city’s own presentation on the council-endorsed private operations model, the most prominent downside was operational cohesion. By surrendering the city’s right to manage the LRT’s schedule, Hamilton’s transit network schedules will be split in two, one motivated by service and reliability, and another by profit. This means that someone who needs to take the LRT and then transfer to an HSR bus will have to allot a disproportionate amount of time to their transfer window — or hope that the bus schedule just happens to line up with the LRT’s.

This will deter commuter students from taking all but the most necessary trips to campus, disconnecting them even further from student life. If you live in the east end and have a club meeting at 9:30 p.m., but your typical commute has an added 20-minute transfer window either way, would you still go?

According to the memorandum of understanding between Metrolinx and the City of Hamilton, the city will have control over the LRT fares. The city will use those fees to pay the private contractor to run the new service. This arrangement complicates and jeopardizes the future affordability of McMaster student transit passes — already the largest single fee students pay at $241.79 for the 2023- 2024 academic year.

The city’s control over fares at both HSR and the LRT means that the MSU could potentially negotiate one pass for both systems. However, the high cost of the LRT contract would likely result in a higher fee for this potential pass as the city would work to find additional revenue to pay for the service.

The LRT’s private costs will have system-wide impacts on Hamilton’s transit. The LRT will be taking over service for two of the most popular HSR lines, the “10 B-Line express” and the
“1”. These two lines, along with a small handful of others, help subsidize the rest of HSR operations. According to the staff presentation operating the new LRT will require up to 115 new staff, meaning this new service is going to cost a lot more than the bus lines it will replace. This increased cost puts the system once subsidized by the “10” and the “1”’s profit at risk of service cuts.

Particularly important lines for students are at high risk. All the lines that go directly through the McMaster campus run on the future LRT route for significant portions of their trips. These critical buses for time-sensitive student commutes are likely to be the first to be cut as they will become “redundant” if they run parallel to LRT service. Their “redundancy”, while important to reliability for students to get to campus, is nothing but an easy budget cut for the city.

The council’s recent decision to privatize LRT operations is not final. This means there is still time to act. While their recommendation of a private operations model will stand in the way of a public model victory. The only way to achieve this victory is through an organized public outcry, which can only be strengthened if McMaster students’ voices are present.

The LRT can be a huge benefit for the city of Hamilton. But, by relinquishing control over operations to a private contractor, the city council has effectively dis-empowered themselves from making it a public good. While the best time to be involved in the LRT decision making process would have been from the beginning, for the future of McMaster students and the city of Hamilton, the second-best time to get involved is now.