Transit services need stability

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2024 (650 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“It’s been prudent fiscal management to push our equipment and fleets out as long as we can … to get as much use as we can out of our equipment. The juxtaposition is, we haven’t saved the money to replace our equipment.”

— Brandon city manager Ron Bowles

In case you were wondering what the end result of poor government decisions looks like, it includes a rusting and aging bus fleet that will require a steep rise in property taxes from city ratepayers to help replace.

Last week, the city’s manager of transit services, Courtney Arndt, told city council during a pre-budget special meeting that several buses in our city’s fleet are in very poor shape.

Of the city’s regular bus fleet of 17 vehicles, 11 were purchased from New Flyer in 2010, which Arndt said are “rapidly approaching the end of their lifecycle and in the replacement (process) for the next few years coming up.”

These 10 buses in particular have experienced rusting frames, aging floors that become spongy, as well as engine and transmission issues, brake issues and engine doors falling off. And there are significant costs to making repairs — the replacement of engine doors, which can be opened at the rear of the bus to allow access to the engines, has been around $35,000 while replacing a rusted metal frame on one bus cost $30,000.

As a result of these problems — among others — eight or more buses from Brandon Transit’s fleet have been out of commission on nearly a third of the days when routes have been in service. According to Arndt, there was not a single day in 2023 without multiple red-tag units. And in June, in particular, so many buses were inoperable that Brandon Transit had to turn down charter rentals or change them last minute.

Arndt told city council that it is imperative for the city to review the replacement plan for its bus fleet so that they can be replaced “sooner rather than later.”

There are, of course, some comments to be made regarding the situation we now find ourselves in as city residents. Purchasing 10 city buses en masse was perhaps not the best option for a small city, as they all now need replacement at the same time. A staggered approach would probably better serve our community and its funding capacity, a suggestion that we hope our city council and city administration will consider.

But the city administration and our previous city councils should not shoulder the entire blame here for poor fiscal management and lack of prudence.

Recall that in 2018, the provincial government under Brian Pallister decided to end the long-standing practice of sharing the cost of transit systems in both Winnipeg and Brandon, in which the province funded 50 per cent of operating funds for public transit services in municipalities.

The Pallister government did so, making public transit in our city less effective, rather than providing investment in a more modern, cost-effective fleet.

At the same time, the Tories decided to freeze municipal funding in Manitoba, meaning the City of Brandon had to find a way to do more with less in terms of provincial basket funding. What you’re left with is a city that no longer had the ability to properly plan ahead to replace city vehicles such as buses, let alone pay for necessary infrastructure repairs and replacement.

Well, not without significant increases to local property taxes, and a willingness to work harder to find grant funding from higher levels of government.

As an aside, we need to acknowledge that the current rendition of council has taken a prudent step this week in approving a new rainy day fund for “unforeseen events” and seeding the new reserve with $1,375,759 in funds provided by the provincial government last year as part of the Stefanson government’s municipal funding thaw. Better late than never.

But there are difficult decisions ahead, and a need to make overtures to the provincial NDP for some financial help.

During last week’s special meeting, Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said that a “big, big piece” of the proposed tax increases the city administration has called for include transit and vehicle purchases.

“By not doing some of them, we definitely would see decreases in services and that is one of the concerns that we’re running across.”

A return to 50-50 provincial-municipal funding of municipal transit services would be a stabilizing move by our new NDP government — one that was originally called for by the hapless Liberal party in both the 2019 and 2023 provincial election campaigns. The Liberal platform also included plans to tap into federal infrastructure dollars to help municipalities electrify bus fleets.

The NDP may question the feasibility of such a plan at the present time, given that they’ve already cried fiscal poverty and blamed it on the Tories.

But if you don’t bother to ask, you never receive.