Skip to content

Council has a chance to prove they want better transit too

This week's Market Squared looks at how improving transit is as much a matter of attitude as it is a matter of getting the maps right
20200926AK4
Anam Khan/GuelphToday file photo

Correction: A previous version of this column mentioned that Guelph Storm ticket holders could ride transit for $1 on game night. That program ended with the onset of COVID and is not currently running.

On Monday, council will hear a plan to realign the Guelph Transit route system in a way that will expand service, create more frequency, and increase reliability in order to deliver a proper commuter transit system in this city.

Naturally, it’s doomed to failure.

Watch at Monday’s meeting how the conversation will quickly turn to on-demand transit. A report to council in September was a victory lap noting how a handful of on-demand transit routes are yielding big cost savings compared to conventional transit services on those same routes. The more fiscally-prudent members of council will be wondering why more transit routes in the city can’t be on-demand.

Why? Because transit is the only service in the City of Guelph that must constantly justify its own existence. Imagine for a moment if the city saw a 50 per cent loss in revenue from swimming lessons and admissions to pools and staff proposed to close the Victoria Road Rec Centre pool for six months in order to save money. Would everyone be cool with that? It’s doubtful.

Meanwhile, substandard transit service is standard operating procedure, and no, it’s not a pandemic thing. The core issue with transit for years has been the disproportionate amount of time it takes to travel across town on the bus versus the private automobile; a 10 or 15-minute trip in a car can take 45 or 60 minutes or more on transit.

Are you going to get more people on transit if a trip takes four or five times as long on a bus than it does in a car, especially if those people can afford their own car? It’s a problem that two other route re-alignments in the last 10 years have failed to fix.

Still, look for council on Monday to focus incessantly on the Revenue to Cost (R/C) ratio, the split between the amount of transit’s budget covered from the tax levy versus the portion covered by the fare box. Council will insist that the latter hold up its end before investing more from the former, a directive in complete ignorance of the chicken and the egg scenario.

In other words, you can’t get more people on transit till you fix it, and you can’t fix transit till you get more people on it.

The practiced apathy of this approach is now muscle memory for council. I should say that the issues of transit are not the fault of any one council, but in transit’s most desperate hour over the last 19 months, transit issues were completely cleared from the table because ridership was understandably sluggish.

So, to an extent, council can be forgiven for not making transit improvement a priority the last few years, but as seen repeatedly in the last several months, they haven’t made maintaining the status quo a priority either.

In March, council’s immediate inclination was to approve a months-long closure of the main downtown intersection for the patio district despite concerns from both staff and the general public about the creation of systemic delays on transit.

Then, this summer, in a debate on lowering speed limits, council again overrode Transit’s concerns about missing connections by holding a vote to lower speed limits beyond the recommended 40 kilometres per hour.

Also this summer, several members of council refused to endorse the draft Transportation Master Plan based on the mere suggestion that at some point in the future the city might pursue transit-only lanes on Guelph’s busiest streets.

Transit concerns should be more immediate though because a few weeks ago there was a traffic jam of cars leaving the two Old Quebec Street parkades due to the one-two punch of the Safe Semester program and work on the Macdonell Street bridge. It’s no secret on Storm nights that the downtown parking lots are full.

Will this new route system work? I don’t know, but I will assume its doomed to failure until the moment I hear just one member of city council say that this is a plan that would inspire them to take transit more.

Consider active transportation in Guelph, and how much attention the issues of bikes and trails get when we see the mayor, city councillors, and our members of provincial and federal government all taking part in cycling events and posting pictures of themselves biking around town on social media.

When was the last time you saw any of those people sharing an experience taking a Guelph Transit bus?

Substance matters, but so does appearance, and from all appearances, our community leaders are not very enthusiastic about taking Guelph Transit. So why should the rest of us?


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.




Adam A. Donaldson

About the Author: Adam A. Donaldson

In addition to writing his weekly political column for GuelphToday, Adam A. Donaldson writes and manages Guelph Politico, frequently writes for Nerd Bastards and sometimes has to do less cool things for a paycheque.
Read more