Thread by @BramRecorder

1/ Here is my business case for Night Service in Brampton.

While Council is talking about a 26 hour city, the reality is it needs to become a 24 hour city first. We have many companies that operate 24/7, or would like to, but run into labour shortages.

2/ Why a labour shortage? Well, in most places, it'd be young people would drive to a night shift, except in Brampton you know, young people can't really afford car insurance, and transit doesn't run part of the night, and really start dropping off around 8 pm.

3/ Introducing night service would allow those companies to get the employees they need to run 24/7 operations, or run them better. GTAA, the people who run Pearson Airport, came to council, this year, asking for them to do the 505 extension to the airport, and night service.

4/ the 505 extension to the airport was scheduled for this year, but, airport volumes collapsed. I watched their presentation and distinctly remember them mentioning their first major shift of the day happens at 3 am. Meanwhile Brampton Transit is shutdown from 2-4 am.

5/ Wouldn't it be nice if we could shift more of the truck traffic from during rush hour earlier?

This would be good for existing businesses, but what else would it do? Well, it'd really help with restaurants, entertainment, international students, help reducing housing issues.

6/ How would it help with food and entertainment? Well, think about it, who are their major customers? Young people. What are the peak times? Evening and weekends. Problem, car insurance is so expensive for the vast majority of young people, you can have a car or money, not both.

7/ The other problem is, Brampton Transit currently is still heavily tilted towards workers with daytime shifts, which is pretty common for transit agencies, especially suburban ones. Transit service in the evenings and weekends is weak, especially evenings during weekends.

8/ This creates a problem for food and entertainment venues, their access to customers during what should be their peak periods, is far below what one would expect for a relatively young city of over 700,000, especially for entertainment venues. How about them movie theatres?

9/ It isn't just a customer access, its also an employee issue, even if you have the customers, you still need employees, and they leave after the customers, which means in a place like Toronto after 2:30 am, or 3, when buses don't run in #Brampton.

10/ So, they could hail a ride, right? Unfortunately, at that time, and given how big Brampton is, that could be $20 or more, each time, which can significantly eat into wages. With operating a bus costing something like $140 a hour gross, saving 7 Ubers, is a surplus.

11/ With transportation costs going down significantly for potential workers, this makes it easier for restaurants to get workers, at wages the restaurants can afford. As payroll is a massive expense for restaurants, saving just 10% on waitstaff payroll per hour, is big.

12/ So, it makes it easier for customers to get, there, and it makes it easier for restaurants to get workers too, which is very good for the sector. What does this have to do with the housing crisis though? Well, think about the restaurants, who would work there?

13/ Most want hours during the "workday", while restaurants want people for evening & weekends, especially Friday & Saturday night, they also tend to not offer as much full time work or benefits, so who would want those jobs? Post-secondary students, especially internatonal.

14/ International students are in class full time, during what would normally be the workday, so evening and weekends actually work great. Furthermore, students on an international student visa can only legally work 20 hours a week during the school year.

15/ 20 hours works for 4 hours on Friday and 8 hours each on Saturday and Sunday, or 4 hours each workday. Restaurants while offering lower hours, often have better income per hour, which is great for someone who can only work 20 hours.

16/ Currently students are stuck between a rock and a hard place, they can only work 20 hours a week legally, which isn't enough to survive on with the current legal jobs available, so many turn to cash jobs. If the employer is cheating the CRA, do you think they follow the ESA?

17/ If the person isn't officially employed, how do they enforce their worker rights, what do you think working conditions are like? All the employers have to tell them is that if they tell anyone, they'll get deported for violating the terms of their visa.

18/ Let me be clear, I'm not blaming the students, who are exploited by everyone, I'm saying, lets get them legal, above board jobs, that pay them enough, and night service buses will help with that. They'd also make enough you could build safe, legal housing for them.

19/ Oh, and by the way, we are hitting design capacity for buses this year, and the new facility opens in 2024, maybe. Running 24/7 frees up bus storage space, allowing more peak ridership buses.

20/ Now, how would we implement it? You don't have to do a huge initial selection of routes, even a few basic routes, running at 30 minutes could work as a start. I'd start with the 501C, 502, and the 511C, and use the N suffix to denote Night service

21/ These would be somewhat different from regular Zum routes, in that they would also make the local route stops. As there would be less usage, and little traffic, they should be able to do this in a decent time frame.

22/ The 501C would be used instead of the regular 501, because it'd meet up with the 335/341/353 TTC night buses at York U, alternatively it could be the regular 501, but add York U as an end stop.

23/ the Main Street Bus might also be better using the 2 route, because the Mississauga portion of the 502 would significantly duplicate the 17. This route would intersect with MiWay 17 Night, providing Highway 10 night service from Port Credit to at least the Sandalwood Loop.

24/ The 511C would be chosen instead of the 511A, because this would help provide service to students living near Sheridan College, it would intersect at Humber College with the 336 Finch West.

In the beginning 30 minute service would probably work, with a plan to reach 20 min.

25/ Of course, this would just be a start, over time the system would improve frequency, and add more routes, building out a bigger network. Introducing night service is a quick to roll out significant service improvement, and allows council to point out delivered improvements

PS/ If it seems a bit weird that I focus on things like restaurants, and international students, in a thread on transit, its because to me, transit isn't the goal, its a means to improve people's lives. Thread here on my motivations

https://twitter.com/BramRecorder/status/1327326821696876546?s=20

A thread on the case for Brampton to introduce Night Service @yyzMYA @Sean_YYZ @chrisjamesdrew @ChrisMParise @EnglishRail @_DivyeshM @StephenWickens1