HawthorneVillager.com

At Monday night's meeting council received and endorsed The Milton 5 Year Transit Master Plan... A plan that when fully implemented will cost Milton tax payers nearly $ 17 million dollars over the next 5 years. ( 20 million if we calculate the gas tax ). The vote was 8 to 3. Council then voted to purchase 3 new buses at a total cost of $ 557 thousand and to increase the service levels for the 2013-2014 transit year as recommended in the report. The vote was once again 8-3. These service level increases include a full all day Saturday service, 4 addtional GO Pick-up/Drop offs, increasing the community bus service plus an industrial park shuttle service. These additions to transit will cost Milton tax payers $ 120 thousand for the last 4 months of 2013 and $ 380 thousand for 2014. It is projected that these service enhancements will increase ridership by 75,000 boardings for the year or fewer than 250 new boardings a day approx. or 125 " new " riders using Milton Transit. That comes to about $ 2500 of tax payers money spent to acquire each of these new riders, and I can 't wait to hear the comments from Miltonians once they start seeing all these empty buses driving up and down their streets on Saturday.

Long term: The report projects that by 2017 ridership will be 1.1 million a year, 2012 we had 275,000 to achieve the plan number we would have to see a 300% increase in ridership or an increase of 30% a year we are now increasing at the rate 10-12 %. Population growth over that same 5 year period is projected at 25%. My question is where are all these riders going to come from. Even with these optimistic ridership projections and the revenues associated with them the tax payer funded subsidy needed for transit in 2017 will be more than $ 4 million dollars, up from the current $ 1.5 million.

Council received the 500 page Master Plan via DVD on the Thursday prior to Monday's Council meeting. I can gaurantee you nobody read all 500 pages and I suspect that there are some members of Council who never even opened the DVD. I had suggested that we receive the plan for information and then take a step back and not make any decisions until members of council had the opportunity to study the plan and consider the staff recommendations. The majority of councillors rejected that suggestion. And so the net result is we accepted and endorsed a plan that will cost tax payers $ 20 million dollars over the next 5 years in less time than we have spent debating on whether or not we should lower the speed limit on a rural road.

Rick Malboeuf
Councillor Ward 4

Why does council allow for plans to be presented a day before the vote?

I guess we should be grateful that the Transit Plan didn't include a subway.

Was it Cluett, Malboeuf (obviously), and Nelson who voted No? I assume so, but can someone confirm who voted how?

Id like to know as well!

Just a quick question..... Does Milton buses have any connections to surrounding cities (Oakville, Mississauga, etc) or do they just drive around Milton?

Milton buses are just in Milton. GO transit busses connect with Mississauga and Oakville.

Anthony was right. There were 3 who said no to the plan...myself, Malboeuf and Nelson. I didnt see the merit in the plan for a number of reasons including the fact the projections seemed to be a tad optimistic and after going through the 539 pages of the report, I think we need to take a step back and review the strategy going forward. The motion called for council to "endorse" the plan, and I along with the other 2 councillors felt we couldnt. By approving this it pretty much handcuffed us for the next motion which was to approve the acquisitions of 3 more buses to service the Saturday service (which staff told me they could do with the current fleet of buses if they had to) and the other enhancements of transit.

Clr Best actually pointed out a very inexpensive idea that might just help with the ridership numbers. He showed 3 pictures of our bus stops and nowhere to be found was a map or schedule of when the buses are coming. Our future plans call for having technology that will announce bus stops and have a sign of when ... to the minute ... the next bus is coming. But right now we havent figured out that we put an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper up on a bus stop right now.

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Mike Cluett
Local/Regional Councillor
Wards 1,6,7 & 8

Website | Email mike@mikecluett.ca | Cell (647) 888-9032 | Facebook Page | | Twitter @Mike_Cluett

Any brave Councillors want to explain why they voted for this?

Also, out of curiosity, do the Councillors who did vote for this use the public transit in Milton?

I only got my driver's licence when I was 28 after moving to Mississauga (from Montreal). The public transit system was not great and it was quite necessary.

That said, Milton's public transit system is not good and the town's layout doesn't really lend itself to wide adoption of public transit. If you want to get from your house, to Walmart, to Best Buy, you're going to invest hours in to navigating the transit system. In large, dense cities, public transit is great with a healthy combination of walking.

I've never used the bus system in Milton -- my wife keeps telling me about this great service to Kelso and I remind her that we are a 6 minute drive away and have 2 working cars that we need for running kids around etc that aren't going anywhere fast.

I will say that my little brother started a co-op earlier in the school year and it was in the Maple area condos and so I showed him how he could get from his house on Commercial via bus. For the warmer months, he rode his bike, when winter hit, he started taking the bus. It was usually about 20 minutes or less there.. I think coming home was longer like 30-40 minutes, but still doable for a high school kid to get to his work gig. I was glad there was a bus service available to him.

The whole saturday service I'm not sold on but I guess there are still some students working weekend jobs that could make use of it.. of course we could pay for a taxi service and save money, lol

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd look at the ridership and what type of money are they putting towards the upkeep based on them playing the $2-3 bucks.. if its a small % of the capital/operating budget, just make it free. At least when people bitch about the high cost of transit, they will be full, used busses!

I'm curious to know from those who voted in favour of this motion why they felt that added public transit was necessary. I take the GO Train to and from work Monday to Friday. When I get off the GO Train in the evenings there are usually four or five buses waiting there. The bus that goes to Scott is usually the fullest bus, though certainly nobody is having to stand and not too many people are sharing side-by-side seats (though this could be by choice of course rather than necessity). The buses that go to the hospital, to Main Street, and other parts of town have a handful of people on it at best.

When I'm home through the day Monday to Friday, I more often see empty buses than buses with passengers, and even then just a handful of passengers at the most.

I think that most people who live in Milton drive or have access to transportation of some sort if they don't drive themselves, whether it's a spouse or a friend who picks them up. I would much rather have seen money spent on improving road conditions, fixing pot holes, etc. that the majority of the population uses in some way daily rather than on public transportation.

I think that special/targeted service for the bus would be a much smarter use of money that might be earmarked for public transportation. How about buses to town events where parking might be limited or where there is drinking.

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Question did the expansion of service include service to and from the new Outlet mall once it is completed?

Opie

No That outlet is in Halton Hills

Rick Malboeuf
Councillor Ward 4

They voted for it because of one or more of the following reasons:

1. They have the view that public transit is a necessity of life for many people, therefore must be provided at any cost.
2. They believe that if they build it, riders will come.
3. They are spending other people’s money, and don’t care about doing a cost/benefit analysis.
4. The temptation to offer something, simply because other towns do it, is too much to resist.
5. They are incompetent, and blindly rubber stamp anything that the bureaucracy recommends on page 1 of the report.

#1 is likely the big motivator. It’s the same argument everyone (especially socialists) use when it comes to public services. “Oh no, we can’t not provide that because it’s sooooo nice to have”. What they don’t get is that everything is nice to have. You can literally use that argument on everything. If the government provided free balloons to every child every day they showed up to school, that’s nice to have. And the day the government took it away, there would be an uproar. “But they’re so nice to have!”, and “My child looks forward to school every day because of those balloons!”, and then the leaps of logic would be made about how it will lead to lower grades and higher drop out rates.

Once provided, nobody is capable of realizing that as nice as they are, they’re still just balloons and completely unnecessary.

What our councilors need to grasp is that Milton doesn’t have the density for a full featured transit system. We should be running core routes, and expanding only as demand justifies it. If we don’t have demand, we shouldn’t be thinking that it’s because we don’t have routes (#2), we should be thinking that perhaps Milton doesn’t need this service.

Bang on. Yeah, it's not a job requirement to post on the villager, but clearly lots of people read it and at least some of these councillors read and post a lot on the villager. So come on. They (hopefully) had a good reason to vote the way they did, so in theory its not like they need to come up with an explanation, they just need to let us know. Because clearly we weren't all there to watch the proceedings and the vote. Nor is it our job to do so.

Frankly, I find it poor that councillors can monitor this forum and start threads or contribute to threads when they feel it makes them look good - but then don't have the guts to stand up and explain something that a lot of people feel needs explaining. I think picking and choosing like that is transparent and hopefully people see through it and judge them accordingly when the time comes. If you never post here, then whatever, that's another scenario.

Yes, I said "guts". Someone can say "no, it's smart politics", but to this voter and I suspect many others, it's "guts" and a lack thereof. So I guess that makes it bad politics in my case, and the case of anyone else who sees it this way.