A New Bus Mansion
Working at City Hall was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I showed up early, went home late, traveled across the city and beyond serving residents and learning every single day. One day, I was sitting at my desk reviewing a report for a meeting when a story by Kevin Love from Raise the Hammer popped up in my twitter feed. The story questioned why City of Hamilton Transit Director David Dixon was proposing costs so much higher than the costs in other municipalities and suggested Hamilton was building a Bus Mansion. Dixon reported to Council that $200 million was going to be needed to build a new bus storage and maintenance facility. Being reasonably new to the job my first thought was: Wow, that’s a lot, but I guess that’s what it costs. When I read the story my first thought was the author got it wrong. But instead of dismissing it out of hand I picked up the phone and started calling.
Raise The Hammer compared Hamilton’s cost to the costs in other municipalities and showed that Hamilton’s costs were substantially higher.
Frugal Oakville’s Facility
The Town of Oakville had recently completed construction on their new bus storage facility. The facility which can store 175 buses was constructed at the bargain basement price of only $45 million dollars in 2011. The proposed Hamilton facility was budgeted at over 4x this cost, so my first thought was what do we need that Oakville didn’t? Does it really cost $150 million to store an additional 25 buses? After speaking with the the very enthusiastic Director of Transit for Oakville for about 20 minutes by phone he invited Councillor Whitehead and myself to visit the facility. Unfortunately Terry was scheduled in other meetings that day, but I went and what I saw was eye opening to say the least.
Oakville’s facility was built at a cost of $155 million less than the proposal for Hamilton.
Does it really cost $150 million to store an additional 25 buses?
For $45 million Oakville built a state of the art 265,000 square foot bus storage and maintenance facility. The facility had multiple wash bays, multiple lifts for working under the buses, overhead cranes, and so much additional (empty) office space that the Town of Oakville was set to begin renting the excess to their local Hydro utility. The facility also boasted an incredible employee lounge for the drivers, huge change rooms and shower facilities for the drivers and the mechanics. They also had secure rooms for counting the coin boxes, a dispatch room covered with displays showing the location of their fleet all in the same facility, and all built for $45 million.
Training Through Technology
Next we went over and saw the state of the art bus simulator used to train new drivers. The simulator had Oakville’s roads entered into it so that new drivers could practice in a safe simulator instead of going out on the roads. I looked at this facility with great envy. This is what Hamilton needs. Storage for a new fleet of buses that can provide service to the under served mountain as well as the outlying areas. After the tour we went back to his office and chatted. I told him about our $200 million dollar figure and asked him where it came from. He shrugged.
After the tour we went back to his office and chatted. I told him about our $200 million dollar figure and asked him where it could have come from. He shrugged before suggesting I look into similar projects at the TTC.
York Region’s Massive Facility
Last year York Region completed a facility even larger than Oakville’s. The 527,969 square foot facility was designed to hold 250 articulated buses in comparison to the Hamilton facility that is expected to store 200 standard buses. The facility was built for just $135 million. $65 million less than the proposed Hamilton facility.
What did York Region get for their $135 million? Take a look.
The TTC’s McNicoll Garage
During the presentation it was revealed that the $200 million figure came from an estimate to build a facility in Toronto (The McNicoll Garage). The proposed garage in Toronto would hold 250 buses including some articulated buses. The price difference seemed odd. So I called the TTC to find out why the facility was budgeted so high. After numerous calls to TTC staff and getting nowhere I reached out to several Councillors in Toronto. They were also perplexed as to why it cost over four times the price of Oakville.
I finally put in a call to Director of Transit David Dixon and asked him the reason for the difference; that’s when the wheels fell off the bus.
Dixon told me the $200 million was based solely on the estimate in Toronto. When I asked him about Oakville and York region he said that I didn’t understand, and that there were big differences. I asked him if he had visited the Oakville and York Regional facilities and spoken with their Directors on their experiences. His response: “I don’t have time to criss cross the country visiting every bus facility ever built.” I was stunned at this. In my head I thought, I don’t expect you to go cross country, but could you at least pop out to Oakville?
Doubling Down
I figured after sharing my findings with my boss as well as the the Director of Transit, that he would visit the neighbouring facilities and revise his figures. I don’t know if he visited our neighbours, but I do know that he didn’t revise his cost estimates. At a recent meeting the $200 million figure was bandied around again(1).
“We need 200 million or whatever an MSF or garage will cost”
David Dixon – Director of Transit
General Issues Committee
February 1, 2016
It was interesting to hear the Director giving himself a possible out here but again concerning that a year later we still don’t have a new quote or even revised numbers to build this facility. To add insult to injury The Mountain will not see an express bus line until after the facility is built. How many years do we need to wait to solve this problem? Are we going to continue to use this ridiculously over inflated $200 million figure to prevent us from moving forward with new transit solutions?
The Mountain will not see an express bus line until after the facility is built.
Perhaps we should simply hire the Town of Oakville to build our facility for us? They could mark it up by 10 million and we’d still save nearly $140 million!
(1) See slide 58 of the presentation. Please note, this link may break. To find it yourself simply look for the agenda for the General Issues Committee from February 1, 2016
