Before this decision was made, the city was considering two locations for the future transit garage; 910 Monaghan Rd./575 Romaine St. (the current location of the Canadian Canoe Museum, which will be relocating to a new building it is constructing on Ashburnham Drive next to Little Lake), and 420 Ashburnham Dr., which is a property already owned by the City on Ashburnham Drive south of Neal Drive.
Peterborough Transit has outgrown its outdated bus garage facility on Townsend Street. The current storage garage is only able to accommodate indoor parking for 42 conventional buses out of the current fleet of 55 buses, meaning some are left outside at night.
The current transit garage lacks modern service areas for washing, fueling, interior cleaning, cash handling, and minor repairs which results in inefficient processes and higher costs to maintain the fleet.
The bus maintenance facilities and equipment are outdated and approaching the end of their service life, as are the existing building systems for heating, plumbing, security, and lighting.
Indoor parking of transit buses is critical to preserving the life of the vehicles. With outdoor parking, especially in winter, vehicles cannot be properly washed and cleaned at the end of a shift, as the interior surfaces and advanced accessibility features (kneeling buses and accessible ramps) are subject to freezing during the winter. As well, it is difficult and potentially unsafe to undertake minor repairs to buses in poor weather conditions when parked outside. The inability to properly service and maintain buses reduces the life expectancy of the asset and increases longer term maintenance costs.
Outdoor storage also results in the need for excessive idling of buses on cold winter nights and upon start up in the morning to allow them sufficient time to properly warm up prior to being introduced into service for morning runs, increasing emissions.
Construction and site preparation costs for the new Transit Garage are eligible for reimbursement under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) - Transit Stream with the Federal Government funding a 40% share and the Provincial Government Funding a 33.3% share. As of May 2022, the City still has approximately $50.9 million out of its total allocation of $57.2 million in Federal and Provincial ICIP funding that has not yet been committed.
The City portion of project costs to support construction will be included in future capital budget requests, along with detailed recommendations on the sources of funding.
The construction of the new Transit Garage is estimated to cost between $47 million and $53,165,100 depending on the final site approved by Council.
