Thread by @BramRecorder

1/25 #Brampton, I said I'd do a thread on the new bus facility, so here it is. Sorry about the delay, I've been sick and that has slowed my pace for research.

To start, I need to explain a little bit about it, the project is a storage and maintenance facility.

2/25 it will be where buses get stored overnight, and also get serviced, repairs, etc. Brampton is rapidly running out of space to store buses, in an email I got in early January 2019 from the City, I was told we would be at ideal capacity by 2020

3/25 the facilities have a design capacity for space for buses, sometimes they can be squeezed in in other locations, or parked outside overnight (highly undesirable for a bunch of reasons), but this causes many problems, I'll come back to this later in the thread.

4/25 I was also told in the same email that they would be at "crush capacity in 2022-2023". Problem, as of mid last year, they were already looking at LATE 2024 at the earliest, so out of space for a year.

5/25 Brampton Transit, since 2006, has relatively consistently ranked as one of the fastest growing transit systems in the country, thanks to hard work by the men and women who work there. You can read about how they did that here: strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1…

6/25 the Züm system originally had funding help from the federal and provincial government, & we used development charges plus I think some property tax. Thing is, that money ran it's course, to the point that the project was closed out with a modest cost underrun.

7/25 in case you have no idea what a cost underrun is (autocorrect thinks it isn't a word), it is when a project is finished under budget. It turns out that when you do one off projects, there is high uncertainty, and overruns are likely. When you do a bunch, you get good at it.

8/25 so, it costs a lot, do people think it is worth it? During the 2020 budget process, the city commissioned Forum Research to understand the public better, one question asked what services and features residents are proud of. Public Transit was #2. (Parks were #1 by far)

9/25 by the way, the Star article on the federal government funding that project estimated Brampton would reach 700k in 2031, Statistics Canada estimated it we reached 700k last year.

10/25 with so much growth, we would need a new bus facility, in 2014 the development charge study estimated we would pay for it in 2018. If you want to know about dev charges, respond so on the poll. Anyway, we decided to expand Sandalwood facility instead.

11/25 Only problem is, we still needed it, so in 2018, Council approved the process to start it. Who can say why council didn't want to fund a large project with non-obvious benefits in an election year (I don't actually know why they did it this way).

12/25 Which brings us to where we are now, we desperately need a third facility, and it will also finish in 2024 when we really need it by 2022. To the best of my knowledge, we also haven't officially gotten funding for it from other levels of government.

13/25 worst case scenario we have to eat the entire $240-280 million cost ourselves, ouch. It turns out procrastinating can be expensive. We also probably need a fourth one, but apparently they decided we don't need that, so instead we will probably wait unti it is too late.

14/25 so, what does any of this have to do with Mayor Brown? On June 19th, 2019, staff came back to get approval to get the money to do an Environmental Assessment so the City could move ahead with building this facility. (Starts about the 2 h 49 m mark of the video.) Second Tweet is Patrick Brown responding "So that we could adopt electric bus storage technology & help combat climate change. Our window to retrofit that next facility is getting smaller. We can't be for emissions reductions only when $ convenient"" src="/images/1px.png" data-src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVh9xzhXYAAKtNO.jpg">

15/25 A number of questions were asked, e.g. Fortini wanted to know if we would be sharing space with Caledon (they were looking at creating a transit system, but hadn't started it yet), answer, they didn't have an agreement (the facility is close to Bolton so good question).

16/25 Brown said he didn't want to spend anything on this until Regional Review came back, staff tried to explain they are only committing money as needed, and if they delayed until November, they would lose at least one construction.

17/25 And this would place transit in a precarious position noted even late 2024 was becoming a challenging target due to red tape. Brown was concerned we could spend millions unnecessarily, if Regional Review changed things.

18/25 Councillor Palleschi, who goes through proposed budgets, line by line, noted the pressing need for more transit was such that he was going to vote to move ahead, because a delay would place things in jeopardy.

19/25 Santos asked if a delay would impact service, answer is yes, it would have a number of adverse impacts, and even if Regional Review took Brampton Transit away, the geographic area of Brampton would still need more bus storage.

20/25 Vicente asked if delays could result in higher prices, yes, when they went back and expanded Sandalwood it cost significantly more than if they built it as big as needed the first time. (Construction inflation has been substantially higher than regular inflation recently.)

21/25 Councillor Bowman asked if we stored any buses outside, Transit staff said generally no, they store all the buses inside. Other staff noted that when they started this project, they asked transit about outdoor storage, and it was explained outside storage would cost more.

22/25 The reason for that is that low floor buses have equipment on the roofs that would do poorly in Canadian winter, Toronto tried outdoor storage and abandoned it because costs outweighed benefits.

Dhillon and Singh agreed we need to do this to keep the city moving.

23/25 Mayor Brown then asks what this project would cost total, answer is $240-280 million. Then he wanted to know what the cost of an outdoor facility. Staff noted they had evaluated building it outside and abandoned it because it had so many issues.

24/25 Brown expressed concern they weren't spending more time on this topic to keep the tax bill down and claimed that he had talked to municipalities and some were using outdoor storage, including some nearby (didn't say who). He also wanted a report back on they needed indoor

25/25 storage. He said he thought even Mississauga used outdoor facilities. Palleschi said they had gone over the issues Mississauga had with outdoor storage, last term or this term, he also explained the money was already budgeted.

26/32 Twitter only allows 25 tweets per batch of tweets

After that Vicente for how certain they were on the cost range, staff notes that since this is at the beginning of the, they will be looking at value engineering.

27/32 staff further noted they would be looking at if this could support making the fleet all electric.

Note, while Brown this week said the delay was about making the fleet electric, in fact he didn't bring up electrification at this point, staff did, he was concerned about $

28/32 I read that report, it's item 9.3-1 of the July 10 2019 Council Meeting, and it explains that outdoor storage was a disaster, Toronto and Mississauga tried it, and both abandoned it because of extremely extensive issues.

29/32 buses had difficulty starting when it was below -15, extra staff were needed to start and run buses for up to 3-4 hours each day, air systems would freeze and staff had to bring buses inside to warm them up, resulting in buses late entering services.

30/32 buses would build up ice making inspections difficult, washing the exterior of buses resulted in the water freezing, so windows and mirrors had to be scraped of ice, delaying entry into service.

31/32 when they tried to wash the interior of buses to clear salt and sand build up, the water didn't dry and instead froze, making vehicles unsafe.

32/32 furthermore it was noted that not only did it cause diesel buses, but it would also likely be incompatible with fleet electrification.

So not only was Brown's recollection incorrect, but the facts show that he tried to do the opposite of what he said he did.

Link for when the federal government approved funding for what is now Züm
thestar.com/news/gta/2008/…

Link to budget showing transit is popular among residents
brampton.ca/EN/City-Hall/m…

Development charges study showing plans to spend money on the bus facility in 2018
brampton.ca/EN/Business/pl…

Report showing that outdoor transit storage was something that was tried, found wanting, and no transit agency in the GTHA will now touch it with a 10ft pole.
brampton.ca/EN/City-Hall/m…

Important note, while I said Brown's tweet was extremely wrong, I did not accuse him of lying, just being wrong, lying requires intent, and I don't know why he said something contrary to the facts. Sometimes people misremember things, it happens.

Sorry about the poor grammar and typos, weeks of pneumonia have completely sapped my strength.

Here is the video of them discussing the transit facility, it starts around 2:46:25