Guelph Transit is challenging the grade given to them in a recent report by the Toronto Region Board of Trade, which ranked the city’s transit system at a D+.
TRBOT, Toronto’s Chamber of Commerce, recently published a report analyzing transit systems in 11 municipalities, including Guelph.
City hall took offence to the rating, saying it was unfairly given, and that their real grade is more like a B+.
“I strongly believe we're doing a little bit better than a D+,” Guelph Transit general manager Robin Gerus said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement.”
Mayor Cam Guthrie tweeted the report was a “hit piece that deliberately omitted facts, data and metrics.”
According to Gerus, the primary concern is that they didn’t include Guelph’s on-time data, which accounted for 35 per cent of the score.
Vice-president of communications for TRBOT Jennifer van der Valk said at the time of the report, they didn’t have the reliability data for certain cities, including Guelph.
She said it was taken out of the grading process.
“Rather than give a reliability score of zero, which would be unfair, we distributed the original evaluation across the available metrics,” she said.
But now that they have it, they are publishing an updated version once they’ve completed their analysis.
“It's encouraging to see that the number we have received is around 88.33 per cent,” she said. “This will certainly result in an upward bump for the municipality.”
Gerus said he believes if they included the on-time reliability data, they would have received a B+. Still, he doesn’t agree with some of the other data listed in the report card, and said it’s hard to make comparisons from over the years because of how much things have changed.
“It’s not apples to apples, because back in 2010, the way they compared things aren’t the same as they compare things now,” he said, referring to the drop in service and ridership listed in the report from 2010 to 2019.
“You can't really compare because we're doing things differently now,” he said.
He also noted the drop in service – 34 per cent, according to the report – could be because they’ve cut some routes over the years for efficiency.
“We want to try to be as efficient as possible, and I'm not too sure that they took that into account,” he said, adding that by the end of the city’s 10 year plan, eight years from now, they will have increased service by 30 per cent or more.
Gerus, and others, have noted there are things the report didn’t mention as well, like their use of electric buses and how ridership has almost returned to pre-covid numbers.
“We have a transit strategic plan. We’ve spent millions on it and have millions earmarked every year to improve it,” said Mayor Cam Guthrie in a tweet. “We tested rapid bus lanes already and approved them within the transportation master plan when needed. We have approved transit priority signals. Service enhancements is ongoing and so on and so on… but no one asked about that stuff did they?”
Gerus thinks they're headed in the right direction, though.
For example, the report said Guelph would need more frequent service coverage (every 15 minutes all day long), 24-hour service, and GO service or local transit integration with surrounding cities like Kitchener and Cambridge to get an A grade.
“GO Transit is working with the city in terms of all day (service), so that’s going to help us reach that goal in terms of achieving an A.”
He said more frequent routes are on the horizon within the next few years, and as for 24-hour service, when they “hit the guidelines that dictate that we need to increase what we’re doing,” they will push for it.
“Right now, our ridership doesn't show late at night that there would be a demand for a 24-hour,” he said. “I believe that when it's the right time for 24 hour service, we will look at that.”
He added they are looking at increasing service in the evenings on Sundays as well.
“There's eight years left in our 10 year plan after this year … we're going to do the best we can to meet the community's needs, and we have an obligation to provide a good transit for them.”
