Waterloo Region Connected
Grand River Transit - Printable Version

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RE: Grand River Transit - tomh009 - 02-17-2016

Much cheaper than paying for parking: our company pays for staff parking in the city garage at $150/employee/month.  GRT monthly pass costs $79 without any discounts.

Edit: No tech company will charge for parking, it would be a significant deterrent in recruiting employees.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

I know that Desire2Learn at least has a benefit to employees who don’t drive to the office, and I’ve known employees who have taken advantage of it. According to the article you linked to, though, this is not going to effectively counter-balance the benefit of free parking, and I believe that.

That idea about the Tannery negotiating a lower-rate transit pass is a great one, I think, and the Tannery might be a likely organization to be the first one to do it.

Tomh009, do you know if the company identifies that parking as a taxable benefit on employees’ tax slips?


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 05:40 AM)D40LF Wrote: That's a shame about Conestoga College. I imagine some of this funding will still go towards additional service in the area as all routes to the college are beyond capacity...

According to the Record and an interview on the CBC this morning, it won’t go to expansion in the Conestoga area and might not necessarily go to transit expansion at all- Tom Galloway suggested that it might be used to reduce the tax increase.

Hopefully it does go to transit. I have no experience with the 110, but I can believe it’s overcrowded- overcrowding seems to be an issue on any student-heavy route, and we should be looking to add capacity.


RE: Grand River Transit - BuildingScout - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 09:06 AM)MidTowner Wrote: That idea about the Tannery negotiating a lower-rate transit pass is a great one, I think, and the Tannery might be a likely organization to be the first one to do it.


Isn't this the same as the already existing TravelWise Corporate Pass ?


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

Thanks- I wasn't aware there was one. So it exists and wouldn't be reinventing the wheel.

Edit: I just did a search, and apparently several current or former Tannery tenants (for instance, Desire2Learn and VidYard) offer the pass. I'm surprised that some of the organizations are not even especially large.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

Actually, it isn’t quite the same as Viewfromthe42’s idea. If I understand his idea correctly, he’s proposing that a big organization buy passes for all its employees, negotiating a steep discount in the process because of the bulk purchase. In the case of TravelWise, employees can (if they choose) purchase their own pass, and being an employee of a participating organization entitles them to a 15% discount (if they prepay the entire year).

I’m still not knocking that. I wish that I had the ability to save 15% by pre-paying my entire year’s bus pass. For some people, that might make sense, and presumably there’s value to the GRT in knowing for sure that monthly pass purchases won’t drop off for some reason.


RE: Grand River Transit - tomh009 - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 09:06 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Tomh009, do you know if the company identifies that parking as a taxable benefit on employees’ tax slips?

I don't think they do.  In fact, I don't know of any local tech company that does.  (And, yes, I know that CRA considers it a taxable benefit, but I would be compliance on that is very low.  And CRA will first go after such benefits in Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver where parking could cost $500+ per month.)

I do like the idea of offering the TravelWise pass as an alternative.  I'll try to bring this up at our office sometime, even if I think that the take-up rate will be fairly low, knowing where people live.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

No dispute that failing to comply with that would probably be low-risk. I’m sure it’s not a CRA priority. I’ve worked at places where it was similarly straightforward that it was a taxable benefit (the company paid for parking passes at a lot it didn’t own, and issued them to staff) but it wasn’t identified on tax slips. It’s kind of too bad, though.

A fifteen percent discount doesn’t seem like it would entice many people who are not using transit already. Parking is too abundant everywhere, and our transit service not quite up to the challenge of drawing riders who have already sunk significant cost into a car.


RE: Grand River Transit - tomh009 - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 10:16 AM)MidTowner Wrote: A fifteen percent discount doesn’t seem like it would entice many people who are not using transit already. Parking is too abundant everywhere, and our transit service not quite up to the challenge of drawing riders who have already sunk significant cost into a car.

Agreed.  But if the pass is paid by the employer (instead of the employer providing parking to the employee), it might work.  Especially for people who bike to work for most of the year.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

You’re likely right, but I think we’re moving out of the realm of possibility in Waterloo Region- what employer here who is now providing free parking would be willing to say to employees “no more free parking, but I’ll pay for your transit pass instead”? Or, if it were a choice between (continued) free parking or a pass for a transit system with which he’s not familiar, what employee would opt for a latter?


RE: Grand River Transit - rangersfan - 02-17-2016

That is a big obstacle here in regards to transit, without significant incentives.
When you already own a car(s) you have to pay for the car, maintenance, gasoline, insurance, driver's permits and any testing that is instituted.
Then you have to pay for transit fare on top of this.

In addition to those obstacles of pulling car owners into the pool of transit users you have:
Significantly longer commute time
Significantly less convenient (at the current time) especially if you have more than one stop to make.
The rush of getting to the stop on time and the dread waiting the next half hour for the next bus.

My family and I recently moved within the city.
From our old house the best case transit commute was 50 minutes (with associated walking time) in the early morning there is a 7 that converts to the Waterloo industrial, after work the time would be closer to 1h10 minutes. The car was probably 20 minutes and biking before LRT construction was 32 minutes.

At our new location which unfortunately is significantly further from the core transit time would likely be best case 1h10 minutes each way, and driving is < 15 minutes.
I am a huge transit fan but even now I am having difficulty making the substantial time sacrifice, especially missing time from my wife and children. This on top of the extra financial muscle required to pay for transit.

Better incentives need to be enacted to lure people out of their cars, I have tried to get my work place to offer incentives to non drivers but so far that has fallen on deaf ears. I am really looking forward to the roll out of Ion as I hope it will reduce my transit commute time.


RE: Grand River Transit - tomh009 - 02-17-2016

No one will force employees onto transit, you are right. But there are some employees who (1) don't own a car, (2) own a car but prefer not to drive, or (3) prefer to bike to work whenever possible. Those people might choose the transit pass instead. And a larger portion would once the LRT is running.


RE: Grand River Transit - BuildingScout - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 10:43 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Or, if it were a choice between (continued) free parking or a pass for a transit system with which he’s not familiar, what employee would opt for a latter?

Somebody who doesn't already own a car. If you already have one the incentives to use it are too high. Paying for a parking pass won't make much of a difference.

Stop trying to force people out of their cars which only makes them into enemies of public transit and instead provide reliable, comfortable transit and people will choose it as an alternative to their first or second car. We have seen this at the University of Waterloo, where increase in demand for student parking has been well below student population growth ever since the iXpress came to town.


RE: Grand River Transit - mpd618 - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 08:55 AM)tomh009 Wrote: Edit: No tech company will charge for parking, it would be a significant deterrent in recruiting employees.

I assume you mean here? Because tech companies in SF don't necessarily provide free parking. I suspect start-ups here in Velocity Garage don't provide parking either. But yes, the kind of change that's likely here is expanding transportation benefits to cover transit as well, or providing parking cash-out.

(02-17-2016, 10:43 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Or, if it were a choice between (continued) free parking or a pass for a transit system with which he’s not familiar, what employee would opt for a latter?

I can think of a few. A not insignificant percentage of the people working at tech companies downtown are interested in a low-car lifestyle, and they might already not use the parking or be on the fence. But the parking being free and transit costing money pushes them to drive more often than they would prefer.


RE: Grand River Transit - MidTowner - 02-17-2016

(02-17-2016, 10:54 AM)BuildingScout Wrote: Stop trying to force people out of their cars which only makes them into enemies of public transit and instead provide reliable, comfortable transit and people will choose it as an alternative to their first or second car. We have seen this at the University of Waterloo, where increase in demand for student parking has been well below student population growth ever since the iXpress came to town.

I don’t see anything wrong with saying that we collectively should have the goal of lower car usage and higher transit and that the way to do that is to make transit a more viable option, and car usage a less viable option. The most radical thing that’s been mentioned here is for employers to stop incentivizing driving by providing parking the cost of which is hidden to the employee- that’s hardly “forcing” people out of their cars.

Most adults in our Region own a car. When those significant sunk costs and fixed costs are already incurred, the incremental cost of driving those cars are really low- no charge to use any of our roads; no charge to use the vast majority of our parking; heavy subsidies to roads not seen or paid by the car user. Transit is not competing on a level playing field, and as soon as a specific subsidy to car use is brought up, suddenly people are being “forced out of their cars.”