The City of Hamilton announced last week that the new $390.4-million bus maintenance and storage facility is now open at 281 Birch Avenue in the lower city.
The new Birch Transit Centre is located northwest of the Barton and Sherman intersection at the corner of Birch Avenue and Brant Street.
The project was funded by all three levels of government, with $155 million from the City of Hamilton, $142.8 million from the Government of Canada, and $92.6 million from the Government of Ontario.
The 600,000 square foot facility has storage for 200 buses, with the capacity to add an additional 100 spaces, 30 maintenance bays, two bus washes, two indoor compressed natural gas fueling lanes, administrative space, a four-level parking structure for employees, 60-foot and 120-foot inspection pits, a paint shop, body shop, and welding shop, a tire repair bay, and infrastructure designed to support future electric buses.
Notably, the facility is the first in Ontario and only the second in Canada to include indoor compressed natural gas fuelling.
The city completed the design for the facility in 2020 and construction started in late 2023.
But while the original cost for construction was slated to be $250 million, that number increased to almost $400 million by 2024 due to inflationary pressures.
In the 2025 tax-supported budget, which saw Hamilton residential property taxes increase by 5.6 per cent – an average of $285 per household – the city had to allocate an additional $75 million to help pay for the Birch Transit Centre overruns.
The opening of the facility was also delayed by two months after it was revealed that elements of the ventilation system design were not up to code, which required the order of special parts to correct.
It remains unclear how much the ventilation system issues increased costs and whether or not taxpayers will be on the hook.
The ventilation issues specifically related to the indoor natural gas fuelling station and ensuring safe air exchange.
The Birch Transit Centre is meant to alleviate overcrowding at the city’s Mountain Transit Centre.
The Mountain Transit Centre on Upper James Street only has indoor space for 200 buses – the city has a fleet of 308.
The Birch Transit Centre also prepares the city for HSR Next, a seven-year transit plan that is dubbed “the largest transformation of the city’s transit network in decades.”
Starting in 2027, the transit expansion will roll out over several years, introducing more express transit, new route types (express, collector, and local), and new on-demand zones.
HSR Next will also build out the BLAST rapid route network, which offers 10-minute service during peak travel periods on six routes.
HSR Next involves an additional 567,860 hours of transit service (55.4 per cent increase), 450 new full-time employees, 79 new buses, $120 million in total capital costs, and $88.3 million in gross operating costs.
The plan is estimated to add at least 4.6 per cent to the city’s property tax levy.
The city is aiming for a five per cent increase in transit ridership year-over-year as HSR Next is rolled out.
The six routes that are part of the HSR Next rapid bus network are: the B-Line from McMaster to Eastgate via the LRT, with rapid buses from Eastgate Square Mall to Winona Crossing; the L-Line from Centre Mall to Waterdown Gateway with stops at Lime Ridge Mall, Mohawk College, and Hamilton GO Centre; the A-Line from Pier 8 Waterfront to Hamilton Airport; the S-Line from Parkdale to Ancaster Gateway via Heritage Greene; the T-Line from Heritage Greene to Downtown Dundas with stops at Lime Ridge Mall and McMaster University; and the E-Line from Confederation GO to Heritage Greene.
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.
