Evidence of meeting #55 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to begin by thanking the witnesses for agreeing to be here today. This is an interesting study. The issue is different from what the committee usually studies.
I'll start with a question for Ms. Perry.
Ms. Perry, I looked into your work a bit, and if I understand correctly, you study barriers, especially in connection with public transit.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Excuse me, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, but Ms. Perry's audio quality isn't good enough for interpretation, so we can't ask her any more questions at this time. Instead, we will send her an email with all of the questions members wanted to ask her. She is still online, but we can't ask her any more questions, unfortunately.
Sorry, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval. I thought you heard me say that earlier.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
I missed that, but it's okay.
In that case, I'll ask Ms. Petrunic questions.
I really appreciated what you said about Via Rail. You were interrupted, but could you tell us more?
You were talking about the potential for the intercity bus transport sector to leverage Via Rail data to better serve people. Conversely, if Via Rail did a better job of coordinating arrivals and departures and sharing information with bus carriers, could it benefit from an increase in passengers?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium
That's 100% correct: This is a long-standing bane-of-my-existence issue.
We have a national rail provider, and we can debate until tomorrow, next year and the next century about whether or not it's properly subsidized. The reality is that it exists today, it moves people and it has a clientele, and that clientele can be leveraged both ways. This issue is not only for Via; it is also for Metrolinx and the GO regional network in the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas. It's increasingly an issue for anywhere regional rail is starting to deploy.
The issue is twofold. One, the clientele—the passengers on Via Rail or Metrolinx—get off at stations. Those stations are not served by Via or by Metrolinx per se. They are served by local transit agencies or, in the case of rural communities, sometimes private rural service providers or sometimes nobody and Uber.
The world would be flipped on its head to the benefit of Canadians with a simple data share of clientele arriving—when they arrive and where they need to get to—for local transit systems and rural providers. The reverse holds as well. Enabling those private and public providers to share their data backward to identify to the rail provider or, in the case of coach, if we take it even further, to the coach bus stations that do exist, with FlixBus and Red Arrow.... When those people are arriving at their nearest local transit stop, they are necessary clientele who can be leveraged for the rail network or the coach network going in the other direction.
If I may give you one example, a long-standing issue has been across the Metrolinx line. It holds for Via as well. You will have a number of public transit agencies on the backbone of Metrolinx through the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas. What you have is a one-way flow of information, typically, from transit into Metrolinx. You don't have it the other way, so a lot of our members of the public transit agencies on that backbone don't have real-time data telling them when the train arrives and when their bus should be there.
It is very simple. It's an operational choice. There has been a lack of political will, shall I say, at the regional, provincial and federal levels to recognize that this is causing damage to the mobility of Canadians. It is a data solution, an operational integration solution, and what has hindered it, of course, is that for municipal transit it's municipal, for rural transit it's often the private provider and for rail it's regional or federal. All of these bodies are not talking together in a data-sharing arrangement for ridership optimization.
Your point is correct: There are clients going both ways, and we are not leveraging them properly.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
I'm going to continue along the same lines.
The committee met with bus operators who said that they had already tried doing a better job of serving Via Rail stations and coordinating departures. They found it quite tough because of an apparent lack of reliability, for one, but there was also an infrastructure problem.
Do you think it would make a difference if money were put towards improving the infrastructure at Via Rail stations, precisely to accommodate other types of transportation and serve people better? Have you looked into that?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium
Yes. There are two elements that can be acted on. One is long term, and that has to be a huge ideological choice by the government of the day. One is short term and can be implemented relatively quickly, with political will.
The long-term one, as we all know, reliably comes down to track ownership. The long-term one is building the track for passenger mobility and passenger rail and not being stuck behind CP and CN freight trains. That's killing our rail service. We all know that. That is a large Government of Canada and Canadian social discussion: Are we going to build that track for Canadians or not? That would increase reliability overnight, but it's a long-term investment.
The shorter-term investment is sharing data with providers. What the providers you heard from are lacking is not just knowledge of when the train will arrive, but knowledge of how late the train will be. There's the fixed schedule and then there's the real-time schedule. Simply put, that data sharing through applications and software would be able to inform the providers arriving to the stations for pickups so that those providers can inform their clientele. That is software innovation. That's technological innovation. That would require, very likely, a mandate to Via to share that data in real time.
Without proper track upgrade, we're not going to fully solve the reliability issue, but if reliability is informed and if clients are properly informed of delays, then the private and public transit agencies that feed into the backbone can properly inform their own clientele about when a train will come or not come and arrange their operations to fit. This is not an impossible problem to solve. Public transit deals with delays all the time. We know from research upon research that the more we inform passengers and clients, the less likely they are to get turned off by the system the next time. That solution can be enacted almost immediately, but it's a choice by government, through Via Rail, to mandate that interaction.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Dr. Petrunic.
Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.
Next we have Mr. Bachrach.
Mr. Bachrach, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all three of our panellists. I'm really sorry that we can't hear from Ms. Perry, but hopefully we'll be able to receive a brief and some answers to our questions.
I'll start with Dr. Breen.
Your testimony was very interesting. You've written about this dynamic between smaller volunteer-run systems or non-profit systems and their innovation and flexibility, and the flip side of the coin, which is the stability and dependability of larger government-run systems. We're also talking about another dynamic, which is the difference between intercommunity transportation and intercity transit between larger centres across Canada. That is something Greyhound provided. You could book a ticket from Prince George, B.C., all the way to Toronto on a single carrier with an integrated system.
Do we need to think about these systems separately? Do we need to think about intercommunity needs differently from intercity needs? How does that play out in terms of the kinds of solutions we apply to those challenges?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
That's a really interesting question.
I would say, similarly to the previous speaker's responses to the last questions, that the data piece on sharing information between these systems is really important. As I said in my opening remarks, there isn't a single silver-bullet system. We could bring back Greyhound tomorrow and we'd still be having conversations about issues with transit. Similarly, Via Rail is fantastic, but it comes nowhere near the Kootenays where I live, so I kind of forget it exists.
It's about a combination of transit systems that are regional in nature and intercommunity, and then the long-haul systems. They're not two separate conversations; they're two parallel conversations. It's very important for them to talk to each other.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Picking up on that, the key challenge we face right now, and the reason the committee has come forward with this study, is that people's transportation needs are not being met all across Canada. I'm wondering if the main challenge is a lack of overall vision and direction nationally, and funding to go with that, or the challenge is that we have lots of solutions but they're fragmented. They're not talking to each other. We're not sharing data. We're not not making them work together.
Is the challenge that we're just not funding enough in this bucket, or is the problem that the things that are already in the bucket don't work together?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
It would be very cheeky of me to say that it's both, but that is in fact the answer. We need an overarching vision and connection for this solution. The federal government is well poised to play that role and to provide some additional funding and connection there. However, that needs to go hand in hand with the fact that it can't be an overarching blanket solution where we're going to do this one thing and it's going to work in every place. That's been categorically proven to be untrue.
Again, it's a kind of push and pull of the need for a connection at the higher level and funding for those pieces, but acknowledging that the needs and on-the-ground solutions in different areas are going to look different. That gets into essentially overcoming jurisdictional hurdles. I get into a lot of conversations where I hear, “Oh, it would be great to do that, but that's so-and-so's jurisdiction.” People don't care whose jurisdiction it is. They want us to work together so they can go to school and go visit their grandmothers and all of those things.
That would be my answer.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Jumping off on that answer, when you talk about the people we're trying to serve with these kinds of systems, what are the first principles when it comes to the needs of passengers accessing public transportation systems?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
I would say that safety is top of mind, and not just while they're waiting for and on said mode of transportation, but the first and last mile. If I have to walk to a bus station, is it lit? Are there sidewalks? These are things that in rural places are hardly ever given consideration. There's a lot of getting on and off on highways with very high speeds and those types of things.
That safety piece is huge. That turns a lot of people off of public transit. I can quite literally run to our neighbouring community faster than I can get there on a bus, and I would say it would actually be safer.
It's the safety piece, and second to that is understanding who the audience is. That piece differs according to community and region.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Both you and Ms. Perry have spoken about the impact that the lack of intercity bus service has on marginalized communities. Could you expand a bit on what those impacts are?
I'm also curious as to whether these communities were being adequately served when Greyhound was at its peak. When we had full Greyhound service across Canada, were the needs of those communities being adequately served? How do we learn from that?
Regional Innovation Chair, Rural Economic Development, Selkirk College, As an Individual
In the interest of full disclosure, I don't typically study longer-distance trips such as those with Greyhound, but from what I know, I don't think they were being served, not because they were inadequate for the long distances but because those shorter-term regular trips weren't being met.
We see that a lot, and a great example of the impact on local people has to do with medical services. For example, in the communities in my region, there is B.C. Transit. There are also specialized shuttles. They run intermittently, and if anyone has ever tried to get an appointment with a specialist, you know they don't make it on your schedule. It's “get here Tuesday”, and it doesn't matter if the bus only runs every other Wednesday. So in terms of the impact on people who don't have access to a personal vehicle or who can't drive, those are the things we're talking about. It's an inability to access medical and specialist appointments or other types of services, and an inability to hold a job.
I work with a large number of international students who love—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I'm sorry, Dr. Breen, but I have to cut you off there because we're over time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. Bachrach.
Mr. McKay is joining us online.
Thank you so much for figuring this out and being patient with our team until we had that done. I'm going to turn it over to our clerk really quickly to do a sound check for the benefit of our interpreters.
I'll turn it over to you, Madam Clerk.
Joel McKay Chief Executive Officer, Northern Development Initiative Trust
Good morning. Can you hear me?
The Clerk
Yes. We will just check your microphone headset. Thank you for joining us.
Can you speak a bit about the committee?
Chief Executive Officer, Northern Development Initiative Trust
What do you want me to say? It's been an absolute disaster getting connected this morning, and far more difficult than it should be after three years of a pandemic. How does that work?
The Clerk
We still don't have the thumbs-up from interpretation. We will need a bit more talk just to make sure interpretation is hearing you.
Chief Executive Officer, Northern Development Initiative Trust
I'm not sure what more you want me to do. I gave you a diatribe. If the committee would like to hear what I really think about things, please continue asking questions, but I'd rather we focus our time on transportation than on your technology, which doesn't seem to work.
The Clerk
Thank you very much. We're just going to check right now.
Interpretation is telling me that we're going to try, so we might see how that goes.
Thank you very much for your attention, Mr. McKay.