By Pepper Parr
April 12th, 2017
BURLINGTON, ON
The third annual Bfast Forum had its highest attendance ever. Just the one city Councillor plus the Mayor bothered to attend.
The Gazette met with Collin Gribbons and Doug Brown to talk about what got achieved during the Burlington for Accessible Sustainable Transit (Bfast) event recently.
The event was the third Open Forum held on transit and recorded the highest attendance ever. “But have they gotten anything done” asked one commentator.
Good question and both Brown and Gribbons had much to say.
“First” said Brown, “is that the transit people were in the room. We have never been able to get them into the room and say something to the audience.”
The issue about transit has always been about funding – more money has to be put into transit to increase the level of service; to add additional services and to begin to come to the realization that transit is a serious part of every urban city, said Brown.
Everyone thinks that means adding to the tax base explained Brown. There is all kinds of money going into transportation and road maintenance. We have situations said Brown where some maintenance work is being done on a cul de sac that gets less traffic than my driveway.
Ridership has fallen – due, according to Doug Brown, to the changes in the schedules and the level of service. Anyone attending the April Form on transit would have needed two hours to get from the north east part of the city to the library on New Street where the event was held,
Burlington has not adequately funded transit for close to a decade.
On almost every metric Burlington fails.
Burlington has been consistent in always being lower than comparative municipalities in terms of how much it sends on transit.
Doug Brown has tried his best to explain to city council how much damage they do to transit when they change schedules or kill a transit route. It takes years for people to return to a service that gets arbitrarily changed.
What irks the Bfast people the most is that city council talks of modal splits and includes transit in that split but then fails to fund it adequately.
When given an opportunity to try to some changes on a pilot basis – city council finds a way to get out of trying anything different.
Advocating fr better transit is a disappointing task – that the Bfast people keep at it is a testament to their tenacity. These people are volunteers – many of them know more about transit than people at city hall – yet they continually fail to get the hearing they deserve.
There has been a small improvement – the city manager is now at least meeting with them.
The city does maintain an asset status system that sets out the condition of every street in the city including when it is due to have some work done on it.
It is that list which is used to determine how far behind the city is in keeping the roads up to a pre-determined standard. City council just has to give the Director of Transportation a Staff Direction – cut back on road maintenance by a specific percentage because we are moving those dollars into transit.
It is really that simple.
What isn’t as simple if finding the political will to do that. Phone calls to a Councillor from a large house in that cul de sac has more weight than a call from a single parents who has trouble getting to work because the bus schedule was changed.
Collin Gribbons, a Toronto transplant who was stunned when he found that he really couldn’t get around the city without a car. That’s not part of the story the city tells when they use the tag line: Burlington is one of Canada’s best and most livable cities, a place where people, nature and business thrive in all their media releases. They seem to believe that if they say it often enough it will become true.
Bfast as a grass roots organization has grown. Collin Gribbons, a Toronto transplant who used public transit everywhere he went in that city, was a little stunned when he realized how limited public transit is in Burlington. He got involved in Bfast.
His background is in communications within the union sector – work he said he can do from almost anywhere. He moved to Burlington with his family to be closer to his wife’s Mother.
The Gribbons approach to community organizing is to create coalitions that can collaborate to achieve an objective.
The car drivers have a voice – listen to the complaints about the road diet that is being played around with on New Street Gribbons suggested.
His approach is to create coalitions of people who don’t have a voice and join them together to take a case forward to city council – that is where the change is going to get made.
Doug Brown has been toiling away at doing just that for years. When Bfast was formed they began to invite speakers to Burlington to talk about transit issues. “We were never able to get anyone from city hall or the transit service to attend these events. It was almost as if they didn’t want to hear ideas from leading transit thinkers, said Brown.
He will have some difficulty pulling the Burlington city council into that circle where they coordinate and collaborate.
If Gribbons is right and he can succeed in creating a coalition that is large enough to offset the impact of those who believe that God gave them the right to drive their cars to wherever they want to go the Bfast people might manage to bring about some change in the way transit is funded.
The city -will spend $24,785,000 on roads in 2017 – the budget for 2018 is projected at $32,065,000 and in 2019 they want to pump $45,428,000 into roads. Council consistently argues that they are years behind on keeping the roads up to the expected standard.
The transit people would like to see some of that roads maintenance money sent their way. Brown thinks that about $6 million would solve a lot of the transit problems.
Burlington Transit is currently without a Director. Jeff Black serves as the Acting Director. He is one of the staff at transit that is worth keeping an eye on.
Please don’t spread misinformation just because the facts don’t suit your argument. First, I know what “per capita” is, we pay less per taxpayer because we don’t have to subsidize thousands of students in our city. Secondly, Georgian College has 11,000 full time students, don’t make up numbers. And finally, we both know no one takes a bus to get their MBA at DeGroote on the South Service road. Furthermore, I’d be shocked if you could show us one example of local employers complaining about our transit system. Please, back up that claim.
BurlingtonLocal: The figures are for per capita, not total, municipal funding. Perhaps if there was any transit service whatsoever to the Burlington campus of the McMaster DeGroote School of Business, its 800 students would have a chance to use it. Barrie, with about 3,500-4,000 students (not 10,000-30,000), spends 37% more per capita than Burlington — far more than the number of students would account for. The chart, in fact, shows Burlington’s population as about 7,000 less than it actually is, and with no increase in municipal spending on transit since the population grew to its present level, the gap between us and Barrie has undoubtedly grown. In any of the cities mentioned in the graphs and charts, students are not the only ones who use transit — far from it. The lack of transit service here is a growing problem for Burlington employers, for example, who have trouble attracting workers because they can’t get to their jobs. The charts are not “intellectually dishonest;” it’s your argument that seems disingenuous.
Of all the cities listed in the charts and graphs above, Burlington is a distinct outlier. We are the only one WITHOUT a university or a college. As a result, we don’t have the demand or requirements of 10-30K students on our roads, nor on our buses. Using the “Service Area Population” and “Municipal Operating Contributions” from those cities as comparative metrics is intellectually dishonest. We are a very unique situation.
There are two answers to Transit in Burlington. First is Burlington Transit Plan and then the Burlington Master Plan.
Personally I would like to give credit to all the tremendous amount of work (volunteering) to Doug Brown. You are a good example of determination and steadfastness of Burlington residents. In spite of apathy and no encouragement you continue.
Doug Brown and Pepper Parr give Burlington the unvarnished information regarding Transportation.
Thank you……..Thank you…………Thank you.
May be the majority of the electorate in Burlington do not want to change the mind of coucillors on transit spending. I believe that would be called democracy and fullfilling your constituents desires unles of course the majority of electorate want more spending on transit in which case next election we hould vote pro transit/pro bike and anti car politicians to council, but I think not.
Craig…wouldn’t you rather vote for people who are pro-bike, pro-transit AND pro-car? The more that can use the former, the easier it is for the latter.