Concerned about empty buses on Davis Drive? Give system time, York Region says

Yorkregion.com
May 24, 2016
By Chris Simon

Dave Kerwin is fuming over the number of “empty buses” he said are running along Newmarket’s Davis Drive these days.

The veteran Ward 2 councillor took issue with a perceived lack of ridership on Viva rapidway and York Region Transit bus routes along the road, during a council meeting Monday night.

“We have the rapidway by Viva and the (YRT) buses, two lines running parallel,” he said. “Why do we need two buses running on Davis, both of them empty? Why are we running empty buses? The costs are becoming onerous. The regional portion of my (property) tax bill is 44 per cent. There are more and more concerns with the empty buses, whether it’s on Davis or residential streets.”

About 40 per cent of the system is covered by user fares, with the outstanding balance paid for by the region and the province. However, taxpayers can’t continue to subsidize the system at such a high rate, he said.

“Never would I vilify public transit,” he said. “I use it. All I’m saying is that the tax burden on the property taxpayer is getting heavier. People are changing their customs to meet those tax bills and that includes taking in lodgers and renting out their basements. We’re driving the individual homeowner out of the market. People cannot sustain the continued growth in the property tax.”

However, signs do point to increasing bus ridership along Davis since the rapidway opened in mid-December. There are about 1,000 boardings on the Viva Yellow (Davis) line, while 300 to 400 hop on the other routes that run along the road, each weekday, YRT/Viva general manager Ann-Marie Carroll said. “It’s doing well, probably better than I first imagined it would. A lot of the ridership is dependent on population growth. As they develop that corridor, and even the plans for up to Green Lane, once all that starts to kick in, the ridership is going to grow a lot. Newmarket is going to be a community that will embrace transit a lot more as the development comes.”

Ridership should continue to increase by about 2 per cent annually, a figure roughly in line with growth expectations for the municipality in the coming years, she said.

Transit route ridership goes in cycles each day, Carroll said.

“We just don’t pull buses out of the garage on a whim,” she said. Across the Viva network, there were about 21 million boardings last year. Viva ridership increases by about 3 to 4 per cent each year, Regional Councillor John Taylor said.

“Davis (is) not the most heavily used, but if you want to see the future, look at Hwy. 7 and see how busy it is. Those buses are moving large numbers of people quickly,” he said. “We built Davis partially for the future. People like politicians to think beyond the next election. We’re doing that and we’re investing in the future.”

In 20 years, the Greater Toronto Area economy will start to lose between $10 billion and $20 billion annually due to congestion, without a significant investment in transit today, Taylor said.