[gweed123]

I believe part of the issue is stop length, not just turning radius. Some of the stops on Barton aren't long enough for an arctic to allow safe exit form the rear doors. If they got around that issue during pandemic restrictions, they may have a solution, maybe when the new garage opens and they can expand their fleet we could see arctics on the 2.

Correct. On-street parking on Barton is at a premium, and the no stopping zones around the bus stops are all sized for 40' pull-ins and pull-outs. To size for 60' buses, you would need to take out at least 2 parking spaces around every bus stop. Especially in places that are covered by a BIA, that's a non-starter.

 

[doady]

A common myth is that artics have a worse turning radius than 40' buses and it's just that...a myth. Case in point artics ran on the 2 for quite some time during the pandemic and with no change to the routing required.

Yeah, artic actually have smaller turning radius than a regular bus. Front part around 32ft long, back part around 28 ft. So turning radius similar to a 32ft bus.

 

[Chris R.]

HSR is selling the replica die-cast buses for the 150 year anniversary. I had the yellow version already and got the red one today. It would be neat if they had or have in the future an old tram when LRT opens.

 

[APTA-2048]

HSR is selling the replica die-cast buses for the 150 year anniversary. I had the yellow version already and got the red one today. It would be neat if they had or have in the future an old tram when LRT opens.
View attachment 720391

I was surprised how popular these were. They sold out of the yellow ones really fast. Good on them for capitalizing on their brand image.

 

[Chris R.]

I was surprised how popular these were. They sold out of the yellow ones really fast. Good on them for capitalizing on their brand image.

When I got the yellow one, I had run over from work, got in line and found out they sold out soon after. People love transit stuff, but HSR and the city more generally has failed to capitalize on Hamiltonians love of Hamilton. Very little city pride, especially from those who have been here the longest.

 

[APTA-2048]

When I got the yellow one, I had run over from work, got in line and found out they sold out soon after. People love transit stuff, but HSR and the city more generally has failed to capitalize on Hamiltonians love of Hamilton. Very little city pride, especially from those who have been here the longest.

I think this transit stuff is a good start. To be honest, Toronto suffers the same thing. But you just need to look at Scarborough Spots on Instagram to see how you can really turn your love of a place into something that people want to buy and show off.

HSR also had some nice water bottles and hats. I found them a bit pricey and didn’t get one, though they looked pretty high quality.

 

[ownthesky]

When I got the yellow one, I had run over from work, got in line and found out they sold out soon after. People love transit stuff, but HSR and the city more generally has failed to capitalize on Hamiltonians love of Hamilton. Very little city pride, especially from those who have been here the longest.

The one thing fascinating thing I've noticed from the angry people on Facebook ranting about the LRT plans is that a lot of people seem to genuinely like the HSR. Not that Hamilton is some transit-loving paradise, I think many people have a positive nostalgic view of using the bus when they were a kid (and haven't touched in many years, but are happy to tell you it's "perfecly fine as it is!"), but where I grew up, in York Region, the bus was definitely seen as the "loser limo" for the desperate and did not really have any respect.

 

[Northern Light]

The spring edition of 'Bus News' is out.

Not much going on in it.....but here we are:

Bus News Spring 2026 | City of Hamilton

Review the route changes and Winter schedules that will operate beginning Sunday, April 26, 2026.

www.hamilton.ca

From the above.

Additionally there are some stop changes, discussion of changes to Presto (same as TTC) , and seasonal/holiday service changes.

***

Not in Bus news, but I'm given to understand the new garage is opening shortly and routes will be shifted over from late spring through end of of summer.

 

[Sunnyside]

The one thing fascinating thing I've noticed from the angry people on Facebook ranting about the LRT plans is that a lot of people seem to genuinely like the HSR. Not that Hamilton is some transit-loving paradise, I think many people have a positive nostalgic view of using the bus when they were a kid (and haven't touched in many years, but are happy to tell you it's "perfecly fine as it is!"), but where I grew up, in York Region, the bus was definitely seen as the "loser limo" for the desperate and did not really have any respect.

I’m obviously a bit late, but this is fairly easy to explain. The HSR is a long-standing institution in the City of Hamilton, that has deep roots and a history equivalent to the TTC. It also was probably, verifiably, a much better service in the past. I mean, it’s the Hamilton Street Railway. So that covers the nostalgia aspect, I think.

Besides also being quite dense, the other half is that Hamilton is predominately ( not exclusively) a working class city, and always has been. This correlates to more transit usage.

There are parts of Hamilton which ‘have the means’ to look down on the HSR because it has fallen behind its peers (first the TTC, but now also the 905 and beyond). Ancasterites for instance are by no means dependent on transit, but they also do not get levels of service that could shift perception.

So more on-topic is, much of the city (exempt the lower city) has underwhelming frequencies and absolutely abysmal stop spacing that hampers using HSR if you have a choice. Many do not. However, perhaps the easiest fix is addressing the ~2x too many stops. Routes can take far longer than any conventional suburban routes I’ve used elsewhere.

Express routes are a good fix, but we are nowhere near our peers on these, as it requires resources that are only now starting to appear.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Hamilton mountain has some of the best transit coverage of any suburban area in the 905. Stoney Creek, Ancaster, and Waterdown are more typical for the 905 though with very poor coverage and uptake, but those are also the areas of Hamilton with the highest incomes and the highest rates of commuting into the GTA. A lot of the people who actually work in Hamilton live on the mountain and in the lower city.

The lower city has a much stronger transit culture because it's actually a city, and is a lot lower income in general.

Hamilton is an odd city in many ways, part Toronto suburb part its own thing, and with very stratified income areas. Most high income employment and also high income residential areas are along the 403 from Oakville through to Ancaster, with central Hamilton being almost entirely government related employment. The city itself is a lot of government workers (hospitals, courthouses, federal and provincial administrative offices, the university, etc.), mostly in lower-middle income tiers, as well as what industrial employment that is left.

Downtown Hamilton has effectively no major private sector employers left at this point. And thus the higher incomes tend to congregate in the suburbs where there is easy access to the 403 as that's where most private employers in the region are.. Which means that downtown has good ridership still, but for the most part the higher income areas don't go downtown particularly often.

 

[doady]

In the early 90s, the City of Hamilton removed a concession road and potential transit corridor (Limeridge Road) to build a freeway with municipal funds, while the 905 built new corridors in-between existing concessions to add new transit routes and minimize walking distances to transit. Perhaps not coincidentally, the early 90s was also the time that Hamilton Street Railway ridership started declining from approx 30 million to 20 million where it has been stuck ever since, leading to MiWay surpassing HSR in ridership per capita in 2013.

 

[ShonTron]

In the early 90s, the City of Hamilton removed a concession road and potential transit corridor (Limeridge Road) to build a freeway with municipal funds, while the 905 built new corridors in-between existing concessions to add new transit routes and minimize walking distances to transit. Perhaps not coincidentally, the early 90s was also the time that Hamilton Street Railway ridership started declining from approx 30 million to 20 million where it has been stuck ever since, leading to MiWay surpassing HSR in ridership per capita in 2013.

The early 1990s were grim in Hamilton, with free trade and general offshoring hitting its older industrial base (Westinghouse, Firestone, P&G, Moffat/Whirlpool, the steel industry) more proportionally than Toronto. This of course was also the time that the trolley bus routes were permanently replaced with diesel and CNG buses; the HSR management changed in the mid 1980s to one that was more hostile to frequent, good transit. The new Wentworth garage was built without trolley overhead, as it was assumed at the time they were on their way out, even though it wasn't yet a sure thing. Had HSR had been more committed to trolleys, it's possible the TTC would have too. Route 2 Barton used to be really frequent when it ran under wire. It didn't help that it was a really bad time for downtown commercial, despite the city's investment in Jackson Square and the Eaton Centre development by Eaton's/CadFair backed by the province. It lost two of the three department stores around 1990 (Robinson's and The Right House) and Kresge and the downtown Zellers.

So it was a mix of indifferent management, major economic change, and the region (pre 2000 amalgamation) focused on the Linc and suburban growth did HSR dirty, with the transit death spiral taking a long time to correct.

 

[doady]

Despite the economic struggles, still 67% of Hamilton workers work in Hamilton, easy for HSR. But HSR maybe have harder time by default because of the Escarpment disrupting the road network.

Barton still the third busiest route, so I can only imagine what it was like its full glory. I wonder what the ridership of the 45 Limeridge was like too. Such a shame to remove a bus route to build a freeway.

Have they ever considered a route using Claremont Access to serve Victoria Ave and Wellington St? It's a huge gap in the network in terms of north-south routes. It is strange for such a major corridor in the downtown to have no two-way bus service.

 

[legoswmonkey]

You'll get your wish next year when HSR Next starts rolling out:

From the HSR Next Final Report

 

[innsertnamehere]

service has been constrained by the lack of bus storage for years now, HSR has been limited to off-peak service improvements only.

The new garage will allow for more buses and peak hour improvements.

I think the decline of ridership in the 1990's has more to do with declining employment levels in the lower city as well as declining population as well. The lower city lost a significant percentage of it's population from around 1980 through to around 2010 - it's growing again, mostly through new apartments downtown, but still well below it's historic population. Combine that with a lot of the major employers leaving.. there is probably half as much employment in the lower city as in 1980 at this point. The downtown office blocks are half-empty and the major industrial employers have either shut down or are operating with a fraction of the staff they once did.