Special to the Gazette

September 13th,2017

BURLINGTON, ON

Burlington Transit violated provincial laws concerning hours of work and followed unsafe maintenance practices following cutbacks made by City Council to the system’s budget, according to an explosive report by City Manager James Ridge and senior staff at the beleaguered transit agency.

Ridge, Director of Transit Sue Connor and Business Administration Manager Colm Lynn painted a picture of a system stretched beyond its limits at a meeting of Council’s Committee of the Whole Sept. 7.

Councillors expressed shock that the cutbacks for which they had voted caused such chaos at Burlington Transit and directed staff to come up with a budget that would at least stabilize the system at its meeting on Sept. 11.

Ridge told the presentation that the deterioration of the transit system occurred under the City’s mantra of “doing more with less.”

“With every exercise [in doing more with less] there’s a line you cross where you just provide crappy [transit] service that people don’t want,” Ridge said. “And I think we passed that line some time ago.”

Among the revelations in the staff report:

• A significant number of Burlington Transit drivers worked above the maximum weekly number of hours allowed by provincial legislation without a permit. BT never applied for such a permit, even though some drivers had worked more than 60 hours per week.

• Two thirds of the time, BT’s mechanics work alone, without supervision. The system has had to cut back on preventive maintenance and has the lowest ratio of mechanics to vehicle miles of its peers. If a bus breaks down, there are no replacements available. Reliability has plummeted, and BT’s new Director and staff have used their own cars to rescue passengers stranded by breakdowns. Ridge called these “fundamental safety issues [that] have to be addressed.”

• Drivers who are classed as casual employees are working an average of more than 40 hours per week, with minimal benefits and compensation below the level of Halton’s living wage. Of these employees, the annual turnover is more than 50% because Burlington pays its transit operators less than neighbouring municipalities.

• The City provides no capital funding for transit. All capital funding, which buys replacement buses, among other things, has come from federal and provincial grants and special programs.

• Ridership has declined by 16.5% as service has become less frequent and less reliable.

Citizen call for a public inquiry of the city’s public transit service.

Councillors expressed shock that the cutbacks they supported had caused such a mess.

“I didn’t realize that the sky was falling as badly as it appears to be,” said Ward 4 Councillor Jack Dennison, who supported diverting funds from the transit budget to “scrape-and-pave” projects on little-used residential streets.

Councillors voted to take money out of transit’s share of the money the city gets from the federal gas tax to fund the shave – and-pave projects.

“Every budget over the last four years, we’ve talked about gas tax split and every year, I’ve asked the question ‘Do we have sufficient funds going into the … vehicle renewal fund that makes this [service] viable?’ And every year I’ve been told ‘yes’,” said Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman.

Ward 6 Councillor Blair Lancaster said she was “just as shocked as anyone” by the information from Ridge and the transit staff. But she said councilors knew that the data they had been getting in the past was “compromised and not necessarily reliable.”

“I think there’s an extreme urgency” to address transit’s problems, said Mayor Rick Goldring, but the next budget cycle was “pretty soon.”

“But I don’t believe we should be waiting two cycles before we get the fix,” he said. “I think the sooner we can get our head around this and how we’re going to address it, the better.

“We don’t want to wait. We know we have to do something.”

Related news stories:

Transit riders get specific about service.

Politicians try to romance transit users.