Let’s consider a scenario. Imagine your garbage pick-up day is a Tuesday, and you put your bins out Tuesday morning like you usually do before taking the kids to school and taking yourself to work.
Now imagine that you come home from work and your bins are still there. Full. No one came to pick up your garbage that day, and no one picked up your neighbours’ either. Understandably you’re ticked off.
So you call the solid waste offices to get an explanation. A random staff member answers the phone so they may not have the answers you seek, but you’re angry and you persist.
“Hey,” you say, “No one picked up my garbage today. What’s the story?”
“We’re sorry,” the staff member tells you, “We didn’t have enough drivers come in to work today so some streets didn’t get their garbage picked up. There’s nothing we could do.”
“So is someone going to come and pick it up tomorrow?” you ask.
“No,” the staff member replies. “You can always bring it to the Waste Innovation Resource Centre yourself.”
“Will you let me drop off my garbage for free if I do that?” you ask. “Will I be paid for my time?”
“No,” the staff member says.
“What else can I do?” you ask frustratedly.
“Well, you can wait until next Tuesday and put out your garbage again.”
“What?!” you ask incredulously. “I’m supposed to hold on to my garbage for a whole week? I’m going to have even more garbage next week!”
“Well,” says the staff member, “You could have put out this week’s garbage last week…”
If this exchange were to happen over a matter of waste collection the blowback would black out the sun. Mayor Guthrie would repeatedly tweet his outrage, council would demand answers, motions would be passed, and staff members would be forced to appear in the stocks at midday.
But since this happens with transit, nobody cares. Just like last Saturday.
It was around noon time when I got downtown and waited for a transfer at Guelph Central Station. The system had completely collapsed because of road closures for the Remembrance Day commemorations; no bus was on time, and no one seemed to give a damn.
Well, the riders gave a damn, or perhaps they were merely resigned to another gross failure by Guelph Transit. How did this happen? Remembrance Day happens at the same time, and in the same way, every year! For the people wearing Guelph Transit uniforms though it was just another day at the office. “What, me worry?” is the corporate policy.
What we need is an immediate change, but this is Guelph, and there’s nothing immediate about transit.
This week, I delegated to council about the proposed delays and deferrals to transit improvements in the budget and I was heartened to see that I was no alone in these efforts. However, I was fairly disappointed that there seemed to be no interest in following up on important points raised on the part of council.
That can only mean one of two things, council understands the issues with transit, or they don’t care. I’m putting all my money on the latter because these transit issues aren’t new.
For instance, one of the transit projects posted for deferral in the budget is “updates and expansions” to Guelph Central Station itself. However, these are not “updates and expansions”. These are completions. Things like an indoor waiting area, public washrooms, and a staff break room were promised when the station opened nearly 15 years ago.
Imagine for a minute if the South End Community Centre opens in a couple of years without the pools. Would the community find that acceptable? Would they just roll with it? Would council?
The Guelph police headquarters was no sooner finished – three years late – when the Service started looking for money to finish the fourth floor, which was purposely left unfinished. Of course no one ever thinks about saying no to the police, but saying no to transit is easy and done with alarming frequency.
And we focus so much on the environmental piece of transit, that we forget the equity piece. There is no equity when people who take transit make trips in 45 minutes to an hour versus people in cars who can make the same trip in 10 minutes. There’s no equity when the city sees transit. If one has the option to use their personal automobile it’s the option they prefer, which is understandable.
I spent my time delegating this week trying to make this point: The community understands the demerits and risks around using transit and by proposing that there’s no rush to change things – taking a 10-year plan and making it 15 – it’s understood that there’s no appetite for change from the people who manage the system.
I quoted a delegation from last week that stood against a proposed large development because, among other reasons, it would require another “subsidized” transit route that no one will use and “put additional strain on the city budget.” We don’t talk this way about soccer fields, or swimming lessons, or building inspections, to street cleaning.
There’s clearly a gap, and it has been self-perpetuated by the city for years. Transit is the only system that we insist pays for some portion of itself and we’ve created a formula to measure it. Everyone counts heads on a passing bus and sees an empty space filled with taxpayer money. No one, say, looks at the dumbbells in the rec centre gym and wonders if the city’s getting its money worth in curls.
And in so much as we can pat ourselves on the back for the multi-level affordable bus pass, and indeed we should, all it does is reinforce something that Guelphites understand even if they’ll never say it: Transit is for the poor, so it doesn’t matter how fast it moves. It doesn’t matter how efficient it is.
You’re never going to make transit a viable alternative until it’s seen as more than a conveyance for the poor, students, and anyone else that can’t afford a car or can’t drive. It cannot be a conveyance of last resort because that’s not how you create demand.
Still, no one at city hall cares. No one will stand up for transit. The deferrals will be approved without a single councillor raising a single objection and tomorrow transit will be just as bad as it is today. And Saturday. And 20 years ago.
Am I wrong?
