The Public Record | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site (https://www.thepublicrecord.ca/topics/hamilton-street-railway/page/2/)
We’re dealing with a crisis we don’t understand because the City won’t release basic performance and staff complement data – the City claims they don’t have it, yet is able to state with confidence that there is a 19% “absenteeism” rate.
HSR Director Debbie Dalle Vedove states in an internal memo that she’ll be presenting a plan for responding to the Transit Crisis to City Council this Wednesday at the 5pm Council meeting.
Hamilton City Council, only two weeks after praising HSR upper managers for their great work, held a special debate on the ongoing crisis at the HSR which is seeing dozens of buses not operating each day as a temporary hiring freeze imposed by Council have resulted in an operator shortage.
No critical questions were raised by Council, even has dozens of bus trips each week are not operated due to a growing staff shortage.
Joe was known by everyone. Active in ATU’s PAC, political action committee, regularly engaged in conversations at City Hall. Gone at age 30.
With an aspirational slogan “HSR Your First Choice”, and major changes to HSR’s upper management structure – including a smart promotion, HSR Director Debbie Dalle Vedove signals that after a year, she’s planning to tackle the crises embattling Hamilton’s public transit agency.
Hamilton’s embattled transit division is facing another multi-million dollar shortfall this year, but despite successful advertising agencies, including Pattison and Corus Entertainment, seeking to offer the City more money for bus advertising, Council approved putting off competitive bids and failed to hold HSR managers to a 2015 deadline for the bids.
Chad Collins wants to look at major changes to cut HSR overtime, and cites Council’s grilling and cutting the DARTS budget as he says “we put the money in and its almost like we hope things improve next year, and they haven’t”.
Council to debate ridership stats at August 9 LRT meeting.
City Council debated the 2017 HSR budget. The budget proposal was based upon the Council approved 10-year transit strategy, and the year three budget calls for Council to invest in transit after two years of incremental improvements funded primarily by fare increases.
Council voted to ask the HSR’s Director to return with budget proposals of a 3% or 1.8% budget increase.
Full Video Replay
More HSR inefficiency and management laziness.