Construction is well underway on the City of Hamilton’s new $396-million bus maintenance and storage facility at 281 Birch Avenue in the Lower City, a project that is expected to be fully operational by the fall of 2026.
The new bus depot is located northwest of the Barton and Sherman intersection at the corner of Birch Avenue and Brant Street and will also have frontage on Hillyard Street.
The city’s transit service, HSR, currently operates out of the Mountain Transit Centre maintenance and storage facility at 2200 Upper James Street just south of Twenty Road East.
However, the Mountain facility was constructed in 1983 and was designed to accommodate 200 buses and 600 employees.
A 2020 report says that, five years ago, HSR had 730 employees working at the site and that the transit agency was storing 67 buses outside.
The city currently has a fleet of 308 buses.
That same report says that “storing buses outside is not an acceptable long-term solution and results in challenges to maintain and operate transit services efficiently and effectively, and often presents employee safety hazards.”
Outside storage is particularly harsh on the buses in the winter and increases wear and tear.
HSR has also continued to expand transit services to keep up with the city’s population growth, meaning more buses and more employees.
A location in the Lower City was chosen for the new facility since it will shorten the distance buses have to travel “Out of Service” at the beginning and end of each work day.
The Birch Avenue facility is expected to be complete by spring 2026, with transit operations, maintenance staff, vehicles, and equipment slated to transition to the new facility over the summer of 2026.
But it will be at least the fall of 2026 before the facility is expected to be fully operational.
The facility will have the ability to store 200 buses indoors on opening day and an additional 100 buses in the future.
There will also be a 30-bay maintenance space, 60-foot and 120-foot inspection pits, a paint shop, a body shop, welding shop, tire repair bay, degrease and lube bay, sandblast room, compressor room, and material storage/stock keeping area.
The design also has space to store and maintain electric buses in the future
The facility will also support operations with administrative office space, including dispatch and control, training, offices, and storage.
Employee amenities will include lunchrooms, bicycle storage, a fitness room, quiet room, lockers, showers, and washrooms.
A new four-level parking structure, accessible from Hillyard Street, will have approximately 400 parking spaces.
Once complete, the Mountain Transit Centre will continue to operate along with the new Birch Avenue facility, with the city’s existing fleet to be divided between the two locations.
Construction on the facility started in late 2023 and was expected to cost around $250 million.
In 2021, the federal and provincial governments teamed up to cover the majority of the costs, with the city originally expected to put up $80 million.
But when the project went to tender, the lowest bid was $331 million.
The latest estimate from the city is that the project will now cost around $396 million due to inflation.
In the 2025 tax-supported budget, the City of Hamilton had to allocate an additional $75 million to cover the increased costs for the new Transit Maintenance and Storage Facility.
Overall, the city budgeted $655 million for infrastructure and transit enhancements, which also include the addition of 33 new buses.
Those costs were all part of the city’s 5.6 per cent residential property tax increase which sees the average resident on the hook for an additional $285 this year.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
