I read in the news that the Mayors “Jobs Now Task Force” has released their report. The members of that group include London Economic Development Corporation, the London Chamber of Commerce, Western University, Fanshawe College, London Region Manufacturing Council, and Knighthunter
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Many have already commented on things the task force seems to have missed for people trying to find work in London.
Economist Mike Moffatt goes over some of the fundamental flaws of this report in far better detail than I ever could, but in this post, I want to drill down on one area of the recommendations, that being transit.
Recommendation #2 in the report is as follows.
“Get better public transit in place for our south and east industrial areas before the end of this calendar year. The lack of reliable service is a major reason why more than 1,000 production line jobs in those areas are unfilled. The problem has been identified and studied for years. For London, bus service that gets workers to our plants on time is an essential requirement for filling jobs. As such, this must be an immediate priority for London Transit and London’s City Council.”
Now I may not be a financial or economic wizard, but I do know a thing or two about operations and I am a bit of a transit nerd….. So let me throw out a possible scenario. If I’m wrong on any of these items, please let me know and I’m happy to correct things.
London Transit (LTC) has started to slowly make changes annually to improve services to those industrial areas. The big stumbling block is money. The LTC has also said they would require quite a jump in funding from the city just to maintain existing service. A fare increase (the first in 10 years) is also being looked at.
For a moment lets imagine the LTC is given the green light to extend service to these areas. What would that look like? To get workers to the plants on time as per the recommendation the service has to run when shifts start and stop. Many plants run shifts from 5 am to 11 pm (I’m not going to include the overnight shifts for this example). So the routes servicing those areas will have to run from 5 am to midnight to give workers time to get to the plants and leave at the end of their shifts.
But wait there is more.
The majority of the workers do not live on those routes servicing the industrial areas. They will have to transfer once and sometimes twice to other bus routes depending on where they live in the city. This means all the other bus routes will have to have their start and stop times extended.
These factors will result in additional costs for the LTC, including payroll costs as drivers will be needed for the longer times and possibly addition equipment (buses are not cheap). Also, note in this scenario I have not even talked about if additional routes to the industrial areas are required. Additional routes mean more costs both capital and payroll.
This is all in addition to what the LTC current budget is which is one of the lowest funded transit systems by cities of our size in the province.
As to the timing, there is no way a change with that sort of scope could be completed by the end of the year, particularly if additional equipment is needed. The LTC does amazing work but this would be quite a large ask.
The funding announcement recently made by the provincial government does not include any funding for additional service to these areas. And the funds assigned cannot be reallocated.
Several questions to the Mayor and the Task Force.
Was anyone at London Transit consulted on this? If not why?
Will council move to increase the LTC’s budget to accommodate this additional service as recommended in this report?
I and many other citizens of London are looking forward to hearing some answers to these questions.