Following up on my report from yesterday, Halifax council today briefly discussed the reduction of ferry service scheduled to begin May 21.
The cuts were actually presented to council in one of the voluminous reports that were given to councillors as part of the budget debate earlier this month. Councillor Gloria McCluskey said she didn’t recall the cuts being spoken aloud, a sentiment shared by several other councillors and some reporters, but councillor Jim Smith said he recalled hearing it. I wasn’t at that debate, so can’t say. Certainly when I published yesterday’s blog post, the cuts were news to just about everyone.
Last year, council set ridership standard for the ferries: 390 passengers per hour during peak travel times, and 290 passengers per hour during non-peak times. For non-peak times, where the cuts are being made, that equates to four trips per hour, or a ridership standard of 73 people per one-way trip.
Today, Metro Transit provided more exact numbers for ferry ridership, or at least some charts that provide an approximation, as follows, with the cuts in red:
McCluskey said she did not object to the morning or mid-day cuts, but only to the late night cuts.
For myself, this is a difficult issue. (Disclosure: I live a 10-minute walk from the Alderney ferry terminal, and use it, although probably not as much as I should.) I’m a fan of service standards, and haven’t objected to similar cuts in bus service, for instance to the #3 or the Sambro route. There’s no sense in having a transit system that is less efficient than it has to be.
But there are some other considerations. One, Metro Transit hasn’t been particularly great about marketing poorly performing routes, or making small changes to them that might increase ridership. Second, and more important, there are big changes in the works for downtown Halifax and Dartmouth, and a late night ferry service seems essential to the overall picture.
Consider that the King’s Wharf project in downtown Dartmouth is nearing completion of its first stage, which is two large residential towers that could provide hundreds of new ferry customers this summer. After those open, two more residential towers will begin to go up, and eventually a large signature building on the waterfront. All told, thousands of new residents could live within blocks of the ferry terminal. (The developers say they’ll have a water taxi service for the project, but that seems geared towards high end business users; most people will still use the city’s ferry.)
More long-term, the city has adopted several different initiatives to fast-track and encourage development in both downtown Halifax and downtown Dartmouth. Already downtown Dartmouth seems on the verge of a renaissance, and late night ferry service could turn it into a destination for peninsula residents. Taking that service away right now seems to pull the rug out from much of that.
And a downside to strictly adhering to service standards—as opposed to using them to signal the need for better or increased promotion of routes—is that once you cut a route, it’s not clear how you get it back.
In any event, council sent the whole issue to its transportation standing committee; presumably, a few weeks from now the issue will come back to council with some proposed reduced service scenarios with budget numbers attached.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2012.
If ridership was the main cut criteria, I honestly don’t understand why they cut Saturday late night service instead of Saturday morning service. From the charts provided, seems that every trip before the 9:30 one has a lesser ridership than any of the trips that will be removed.
Where is a citizen body that helps shape transit policy at city hall? Where is Halifax’s straphangers campaign!?!? We need one, desperately. It’s obviously not the councillors.
EVERYTHING should be on chopping block then EXCEPT the #1. If MT is going to use this kind of logic, fine, no sacrifical cows. Any route that loses money should be re-evaulated at the same time as ferry routes before they start making cuts.
Where are the stats for the ridership of ALL the other routes? I want to see them.
What if chopping service times to several bus routes would save millions – shouldn’t they be doing that first, instead?
Shouldn’t other factors be taken into account – like, I don’t know, city planning and development!?
If they want to turn MT into a money making venture – fine. They will have to get off of their lazy asses and begin consultations with the PUBLIC i.e. RIDERSHIP to plan routes that make sense, that get people where they want to go, and when.
A city this size doesn’t need 80 routes, especially since so many of them traverse the same finite, small, congested roads.
The ferry is Dartmouth’s ferry. If Halifax City Hall wants a clusterfuck hanging over them, they’d better leave Dartmouth’s ferry alone.
It’s been there since 1750 and I’ll be damned if they start cutting it just as it is about to become more useful than it already is for thousands of new residents of Downtown Dartmouth, an area that doesn’t need any more kicks to the face.
When winter road conditions are dangerous the ferry provides a useful alternative.
Wait, why are they cutting the late night Saturday ferry and not the early morning ones, which clearly have less riders? This is discrimination against drunk people.
Cut Saturday morning ferry, keep Saturday night ferry. On that note, Keep the Friday night ferry services alive too… I’m sure if there was data available for Friday compared to the rest of the week, Friday night would be up there with Saturday night. What about times like the Buskers Festival, Tall Ships, Canada Day fireworks, Natal Day fireworks, and things like that? If you’ve ever taken a ferry on those days, you know that they need all hands on deck… Will there be provisions for extra service on those kinds of days/events?
Oh no!!! This is a travesty of epic proportions. What will the citizens of Dartmouth do with this…well…this minor convenience? Oh…right…they can just take the bus. Now you can wrap yourselves in that warm fuzzy feeling, brought on by single handedly saving tax payers money. And think of the carbon footprint you’ll be reducing. Way to go Dartmouth, in a sign of good faith, we’ll let you enjoy our fireworks from your shoreline again this year.
PS; I believe this scandal goes all the way to the top. GODDAMMIT!! I am demanding the prime minister step down. Immediately!!!!
Who came up with these standards? The standards for buses are much lower. They should be the same – it is one transit system.
Stick your fireworks up your ass you dirty haligonian 😉
After seeing the numbers i think they should be cutting more trips than they already are saturday morning all the way up until 930 and the sunday 11am trip seem like prime ones to cut. Also i remember metro transit did a report on how many people took each route, i can’t fidn it right at this moment but this has ballpark numbers for your dartmouthy http://www.cptdb.ca/wiki/index.php?title=M…
Nice stats Wilcox, thanks. So it looks like the 3, 5, 15, 31, 33, 35, 83, 85, 86, 88, and 165 should be cut at the same time… Oh wait, those aren’t Dartmouth buses…
Well the 165 is. I’m sure that will be cut promptly.
So even on the slowest Sunday, the ferry has almost 1,000 passengers in a day… way more than those routes I mentioned, some by 1000%…
“two large residential towers that could provide hundreds of new ferry customers”, Tim- what evidence is there that these residents will use the ferry? There’s already hundreds, if not a couple thousand people living within downtown Dartmouth, they evidently are not using the ferry on the times in question, so why should these new residents be any different? Just because new blood is coming, doesn’t automatically mean they’ll use a ferry service. They’ll probably be like the majority of those whose income allows them to buy into such a place, and own cars. They won’t touch any kind of transit without being forced to. Such is the attitudes around here.
I think that gettting rid of the night service during summer is a stupid move. Too many events going on. Do it in the winter, sure, but don’t cut it completely. But, if there truly is only 10 people using the ferry that time of night, the rest of the year, then this cry that businesses in downtown Halifax will suffer, is stupid. I’m pretty sure they don’t succeed or fail on the whims of ten people.
I see in the paper today, that they’re going to revisit the decision and do more research. Maybe they’ll see that cutting it during the Summer is not a good move. Or not.
@TDF
Could = conditional. He doesn’t have any evidence. He said it COULD provide new riders. It’s not that far out of left field, either. The “thousands” of people you say are living in downtown Dartmouth who don’t use the ferry aren’t crossing over to Halifax because a difference in demographics. The reason these high-end expensive condos are going up in downtown Dartmouth is gentrification; most people living within a kilometre or two from the Alderney terminal can’t afford the overpriced nightlife in downtown Halifax. The people who will be living in these new condos will.