IDEA: How about making the A-Line LRT free fare?
for Lower City segment only -- and at least for GOtrain riders
Because it is only a 1.5 kilometer stub that connects two GO stations.
Calgary C-Train operates free LRT service in the downtown segment, for just pennies per passenger!
The two GO train stations are only a 15-20 minute walk apart, but with frequent allday LRT service every few minutes with traffic signal priority, it functions as a quick peoplemover between two GO stations especially if you've missed the GOtrain at one of the two stations, and want to quickly hop to a later train at the other end. Especially as more trains come to Hamilton.
The new GO schedule starting July 9th show that two GO stations (Hamilton Downtown & West Harbour) alternate peak period trains every 15 minutes for some part of the morning. The LRT should be fast enough that if you miss the 6:45am GO train you can realistically easily catch the 7:00am train at the other GO station, either with every-5-min service or an LRT intentionally waiting until 3-5 mins after the GO train left (to collect late stragglers who now need to rush to the other GO station).
The short 1.5 kilometer sprint would probably have one intermediate stop (i.e. Cannon), or even none, and it would be traffic prioritized, so it will reliably reach the other GO station in less than 5 minutes. At this speed, you only need one train to move back and fourth on a single traffic-prioritized traffic-separated LRT track, and still have safety margin to have people catch the next GO train.
You only need to sacrifice one James Street streetside parking to the LRT, and you gain traffic-light-prioritized traffic-separated LRT on James without disrupting car traffic appreciably. Only one track needs to be built, for 1 train moving back and fourth over 1.5 kilometers. With only 1 train, you
only need 1 driver salary to operate the whole A-Line! (as well as maintenance costs for that single trainset). Operating costs of A-Line potentially become cheap enough to provide the A-Line peoplemover service for free (like Calgary C-Train), and provides free advertising for people to pay for B-Line. Farebox recovery becomes higher with the free service because of follow-on payments to GOtrains and B-Line.
One possible Presto Fare Integration brilliant idea is to make the A-Line peoplemover free with a GO Train ride.
You miss your GO train, you jump on the A-Line LRT for free if you've already tapped (or LRT fare deducted automatically when tapping Presto at GO station) -- and catch the next GOtrain at the other station. Like the downtown "free peoplemover" segment of Calgary's C-Train where the C-Train is free if you hop between the downtown stations.
Heck, even make A-Line free to everybody in Hamilton, if there was a way to make the numbers work (e.g. profit increases on B-Line outweigh the costs). This may be politically risky (being it the Liberals) but we can use the C-Train excuse too. At the very least, it should be integrated for free with GOtrain ride.
They can afford to do that in Calgary because operating cost is
only $0.27 per passenger (2005), and probably still under $0.40 per passenger in 2015 dollars. Operating costs can be quite cheap, once the incredibly huge & scary capital cost is paid ($1bn, admittedly a lot of money for barely above half a million people). With $10 GOtrain fares, it's just pennies on the dollar to give free Lower City A-Line LRT rides to Hamilton, and would actually decrease taxpayer burden (or increase profit, if profitable) by feeding the paid B-Line and paid GO Train.
As for who pays for this, Metrolinx should assume the cost of fare-integrated (or even free) A-Line service, since they are operating the related services they're attracting people to (GO trains and B-Line LRT) -- it actually can raise farebox recovery due to the good transit advertising, depending on how it was presented or integrated.
