How would you like to talk to two CEOs who held the same position back to back?

I'm Paul Comfort, and this is Transit Unplugged America and the world's

leading podcast where we talk to transit executives to find out what's happening

in their operations and we go behind the scenes and show you everything.

Today we talk with Nancy Purser in this part two of a two-part series from Canada.

Last week we spoke with Maureen Cosyn Heath, who now

is CEO of MiWay, Mississauga Ontario's transportation system.

Prior to that, she was head of Hamilton Street Railway.

Now it's Nancy Purser, who's the acting director.

They were both in the same room.

I interviewed them one right after the other.

Nancy Purser is, has been a member of the staff there at Hamilton Street

Railway since 2010, for about 15 years.

She joined as the manager of transit support services and quickly became

the driving force behind some of the city's most transformative initiatives.

From rolling out the Presto Smart Card system to helping craft the 10 year local

transit strategy, Nancy has consistently championed innovation and accessibility.

And on today's podcast that we recorded live and in person,

she tells us all about it.

Let's jump into the conversation now with Nancy Purser.

Excited to be in Canada today for part two of two powerful women who

are leading transit in Ontario.

Last week we interviewed Maureen Cosyn Heath, director of transit at MiWay,

and if you listened, you recall at the end she said she recently left an

agency to take her job there at MiWay.

And the agency she left was Hamilton Street Railway.

Well, today we have the acting transit director for that agency, Nancy Purser.

Nancy, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

So tell us a little bit about your agency, Hamilton Street Railway.

Most unique to me is it's not a railway anymore.

But you kept the name, right?

That that is right.

Hamilton Street Railway is actually 150 years old.

We celebrated our 150th year in 2024.

And we did start with rails in the ground, pulling horses, pulling wagons.

And we are going back to rails in the ground.

Okay.

We did go out to look at rebranding at one point and there was a

resounding, don't change the name.

It resonates with the residents in Hamilton.

So we continue to be Hamilton Street Railway.

They call you though HSR, right?

Yes, they do.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And you've been there a while?

I've been there for 15 years.

Okay.

And what, what'd you do?

What's your background?

So, prior to coming to transit was a long, circuitous route.

I started in the private sector, manufacturing.

Okay.

Went through a couple of manufacturing organizations that,

you know, you really learn how to be productive, right, to make money.

Yeah.

Bottom line.

It's all about that.

And then found the stress of trying to make money on something

that's not that important.

I needed a change and I found social housing and I saw how much a

difference that can make to people's lives and how important that was.

And, you know, small groups of individuals.

And then I had an opportunity to look at transit.

It serves so many more people, it improves the lives of so many more people.

And I found my home.

I started there as a manager of transit support services, was involved

in so many areas, including fare policies, operational training,

quality management, budgeting, and also amazed by how complicated

it is to put a bus on the road.

That's just to me was the catcher.

Yeah.

It's like, how do you, how do you do that?

It looks so easy when it just drives down the street.

Yeah.

And it's not.

And so subsequently after Maureen left, I was appointed acting director.

So just where I am today.

Congratulations.

How, and you've been in this role, what, three or four months?

Four months.

Four months?

Yes.

What do you love most about transit.

I mean, I love your story and I felt the same way.

I would agree.

It is truly customer oriented service that is provided.

Where we wanna hear the voice of the customer.

We wanna know what they want, and provide them the best, safest, most

reliable service that we can, because we know how important it is to them.

We know they need it to get to school, to get to where

Right.

To get to their appointment.

So that is what excites me about it.

And what keeps me there.

Yeah.

Mobility is life, right?

Mm-hmm.

It is.

I mean, if you're stuck, if you're not moving, you're probably dead.

Right.

You know, whether it's a plant or a person, whatever.

If you're moving, that's life.

And so we provide access to all of life's opportunities.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

It's a great feeling, isn't it?

Yes.

I have a friend of mine who had a 14, well he's a little older now,

but at the time, 14-year-old son who found transit and was just gone.

He's like, I know how to get there.

I wanna go there.

I wanna do this.

I don't need you to drive me.

Yeah.

And just the freedom that he found at 14, which all 14 year olds should try it.

Yeah.

It's, transit is the safest place and the safest mode of moving about a city.

So how big is Hamilton?

You know, gimme some of the stuff about where you operate.

So you're a part of Ontario, right?

You in Ontario?

Yes, we are part of, well we call ourselves the greater

Hamilton, Toronto-Hamilton area.

Okay.

So we are at the west end of Lake Ontario.

Okay.

And in, as part of the golden Horseshoe, which includes Niagara

all the way out to bury the escarpment, follow the escarpment.

So we have, present about 570,000

is our population.

Okay.

We have a very large rural area, so we only service our urban area,

which is about 243 square kilometers.

So, pretty big area to cover.

We have right now 320 buses.

Okay.

86% of them are fueled with compressed natural gas.

The remainder are diesel, but we'll be through all of them and by the end of

2026, so we'll be a hundred percent CNG.

Oh, the end of next year?

Yes.

Wow.

100% CNG?

Yes.

That's awesome.

Congratulations.

Yes.

It'll, it's we will be the greenest fleet in Ontario for sure, by that time.

It's very low.

Like, it's very, very low.

It's particulates or whatever, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even the production, like from cradle to grave

Oh yeah.

Green process.

Yes.

It's still green.

That's interesting.

Yes.

Yeah.

So yeah, we have almost a thousand employees that work for, in transit.

That's big time.

Yeah.

About 700 of them are operators.

150 are in our maintenance area.

And the remainder are our admin, our supervision.

Okay.

Talk about CNG a little bit more.

So is there, is there a lot in the ground here?

Is that why you all chose for that?

I mean, it's local.

You can just pull it up?

I don't know that it's here.

Okay.

But, you have access to it?

We have access to it.

Hamilton is mostly heated with natural gas.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, we partnered with Enbridge, who is a natural gas provider.

Okay.

To help build our stations that actually fuel it.

Currently we have an outdoor, it's an outdoor fueling station just

because it's compressed natural gas.

Right.

We are building a second facility right now down in the lower city.

We have a mountain in Hamilton.

We refer to it affectionately as the mountain.

I've been there.

I've seen that.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So we have our current facility and the only one we operate is on the

mountain with an outdoor fueling station.

We are currently building one in the lower city with an indoor fueling station.

Wow.

The very first one in Ontario, I believe.

The second one in Canada.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, our employees that, you know, clean and fuel the buses will be

excited that they get to do it inside.

Yeah.

What about RNG?

Are you, are you experimenting with that?

RNG is, we've, we did, experiment once already.

We had enough brought in to fuel one bus.

So that's exciting.

We just need to continue to investigate some more.

It is more costly.

Renew, it's renewed

Renewable natural gas.

Yeah.

So, you know, we're getting the fuel from dumps, right?

Where they

Oh yeah.

The methane gases and all of that.

Oh, they burn it off or whatever.

It comes out the

Yeah.

The landfills.

Right.

And you try and reuse that as gas.

Okay.

So it's trying to get enough to fuel all of our buses, because it's,

that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I know.

So they capture it as it's coming off, but the

mm-hmm.

methane or whatever the gas is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great idea.

I know.

And so it's, it works out to net zero, right?

It's carbon negative, as opposed to electric or any of the

others that are carbon neutral.

Interesting.

Yes.

I used to be a county administrator and we ran a landfill and I remember we had

flares that would burn it off coming off a landfill, but I've heard about capture

mm-hmm.

Where they capture it and try to do something with it.

That's great.

Yes.

Wow.

So you think you're gonna look into it more?

Yes, we are.

Hopefully, we'll, I mean with the new facility and going a hundred

percent CNG, it's a great opportunity, because the volume will allow

us to get it at a better price.

Thanks for listening to the Transit Unplugged Podcast.

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Paul Comfort for this edition of the award-winning Transit Unplugged podcast.

Let's talk about ridership.

I think Maureen and I talked about it last week on the previous podcast and how, you

know, ridership patterns have changed.

Ridership has generally gone down.

Some cities are back up to what they were at in 2019, but some aren't.

And you know, a lot of people are saying, is that really the main

metric we should be looking at?

But one thing that a lot of transit systems are looking at, it sounds like

you all are too, is a network redesign.

So ridership patterns have changed and a lot of transit agencies

are still running the same bus routes they ran five years ago.

Are you changing that?

Yes, we are.

We just, recently got approval from our council to implement what is called

Moving Hamilton Forward.

It's been years of work to reshape our network.

We worked with McMaster University on some technical support.

We had 27,000 customer touch points to help ensure that we

designed it to their requirements.

Okay.

And we will be implementing it over the next seven years.

This,

Oh, it's a slow burn or whatever.

Yeah, it's an additional 50% in service.

You're adding more service?

Yes.

50%?

50% more service.

Holy moley!

Yes.

So,

Wow.

Transit in Hamilton is gonna grow substantially.

It's another 450 FTE

Wow.

That we're gonna be adding.

We gotta dig into this now.

Yes.

Yes, so it is, it's a substantial change.

We currently, we have 34 routes and one on demand route.

We'll have 41 routes and six on demand routes We're looking at, again Hamilton

is an amalgamation of many communities.

Okay.

And historically, the outlying communities did not receive good

transit, and so that's where most of the investment is going.

Ah, out to the suburbs.

Out to the suburbs,

Okay.

Which is where people have moved to, that's where our growth

has, we've seen the growth.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

We've added business parks though, out in those areas.

Okay.

And so once this grows, we will have a network that will give anyone

access to jobs within 45 minutes.

Very nice.

So's very,

Is that like a goal you were trying to do to re

Yes, and it's, you know, equity deserving areas, right?

The focus is there to make sure that they have transit that will allow

them to be competitive, to be in the market for all kinds of jobs.

So you're gonna roll it out over seven years?

Yes.

Like you've got, we're gonna go to this neighborhood next year,

in the neighborhood the next year.

It's a combination

Okay.

Of we'll do one or two neighborhoods, and also changing

the main routing at the same time.

I was gonna ask you about that.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

So that some of it will orient.

We had a typical hub and spoke, so everything went to our downtown core

and then came back up and went out.

So now we're gonna have a hub to hub system, so people will

be able to get to places faster.

Ah, I love that.

Suburb to suburb.

Yeah.

So you don't have to go downtown and come back out in the V.

Right.

Dude, that's awesome.

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

I hope you can make that stick.

Sometimes when they come back later, they're like, eh, but that's important.

Yeah.

So our focus is on the network as designed, and we're

going to try not to deviate.

Yeah.

More power to you.

Yeah.

If you're gonna,

so the amount of subsidy from the city is gonna have to go up

a little bit each year, right?

Yes.

It is not just,

What's your budget now, do you know?

Not just a little bit.

It's about 127 million.

Okay.

Gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So that's really interesting.

So you have a big planning department that's been working on this with outside

consultants and all that kind of stuff.

So we don't have a big planning department.

Okay.

But we have a very good planning department.

That's good.

We did get consultants to help support how to implement in which

order do we, you know, change the network and add the service.

Yeah.

So we had them kind of lead whole team where we got many other

people, sections of the city to also participate public health planning our

transportation area so that everyone can see what's happening, and also

help direct when changes would happen.

So is the plan done now?

The plan is done.

Okay.

Approved?

It's approved.

Boom.

All we gotta to do now is make it happen.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yes, its very, very exciting.

I don't know anyone who's increasing bus service by 50%.

No.

That is something,

We just finished a 10 year local transit strategy, so we've

already had eight years of growth.

We're kind of wrapping up the 10 year

Okay.

and rolling into this new one.

So the City of Hamilton hasn't been investing in transit since 2015.

So, including through the pandemic, they continue to invest.

So We are set in a really good place.

Our council understands how important transit is to building the community.

Yes.

To building the city of Hamilton.

And they can see that this network will actually transform it.

I'm sure Maureen was super involved in that.

She was.

Yeah.

Oh, yes, she was.

How long was that process,

like putting this plan together?

So we started to do the network design in 2018.

Oh,

and then the delays, right.

The pandemic and all that.

And then, the net we had it finalized.

Maureen came on board and you know, we worked really hard to create growth plan.

So we had the 10 year strategy, we had this network redesign.

Yeah.

You know, we need to, we can't keep going on two separate angles.

Right.

So, you know, put them together

Yeah.

as a growth plan.

And then HSR next.

How are you doing ridership wise, as compared to, I hate to say it, but

two, let's just say the year 2019.

Yeah.

So we had recovered pretty well by 2024.

Okay.

We are seeing some slight reductions right now.

The government of Canada made some changes to immigration, and our colleges

relied heavily on international students.

And we rely heavily on our colleges to fill our buses.

Mm.

So we've been, and I think it's, throughout Ontario, I've seen

it that there's been reductions in riderships this year.

And, from our perspective, Hamilton's perspective, it is truly because

of the changes in immigration.

Stuff that you can't control.

We can't control that.

Yeah.

So we are still focused on growing and going after other markets.

So our, we're looking at commuters.

We're trying to get to the youth because they are the riders of the future.

Sp we haven't lost substantial ground.

But it's a real, it's starting to become a struggle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll be going up to the CUTA conference in Montreal, and I just saw that the

government of, the federal government has been giving, they have a new program

where they've, last couple years they've been giving, I think it's $3 billion,

something like that, nationwide.

Do you all get some of that money and is that helping you?

A new program has been announced, which is the Canada Public Transit Fund.

Yes.

And there's baseline funding.

So every transit agency has been pretty much guaranteed money for

the next 10 years, to support

Is that operating dollars?

It's capital dollars.

Our federal government only supports from a capital,

That's what I thought,

perspective.

But during the pandemic, they helped a little bit in operating, right?

They, if you matched it with provincial new dollars?

um.

No,

Not really?

No.

It was the province who

probably stepped up

that really stepped up.

Okay.

But this is new capital dollars, which will be helpful for you, right?

Yes, yes.

So it's permanent funding and it's gonna help us fund our replacement buses.

'cause we know we have that expenditure every year.

Yeah.

We have to, you know,

Like how many buses are you getting a year normally?

So it depends.

This year, we're gonna be placing an order for 18 articulated new articulated buses.

Oh, new artics.

Okay.

That's good.

And those are replacement.

And then we have another order for new fleet to service HSR Next.

Okay.

So that's another 18 or so articulated buses, and then some small buses

to help with the on demand.

Gotcha.

We've got you and I and Maureen and Michael Coote from Nova are gonna

be on a panel later today here at this Vontas Canada Users Forum.

And I'm sure the bus manufacturers love you if you, if you're expanding the fleet.

Huh.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is, it is wonderful.

We're hoping that we get the order in, but the buses don't start to arrive until

after we've opened our second garage.

Oh yeah.

When will you be trying to do that, do you know?

Um, so we are at about 90% completion.

Okay.

Now, if the second facility, it's designed so that we can

maintain 300 buses, it's a very,

'cause it's for the expansion?

Yes.

Okay.

It's a very, very large Facility.

We currently will be able to store 200 buses, but we'll be able to expand to 300.

And they'll all be stored indoors?

They will all be stored indoors.

That's great.

Yes.

Especially the weather up here gets cold winters.

Yeah.

Yes, it does.

So once that new garage is open, it does allow us to move ahead with all of

our additional buses and with HSR next.

That's great.

So, all right.

Let's dive into you, personal life.

What do you wanna tell me about your personal life?

Personal life.

What do I have?

I have

Do you have a personal life now?

I do.

Yeah.

You've got this new gig as head of it.

I know it kind of consumes you, doesn't it?

I have a daughter who we are currently planning her wedding.

Oh, congratulations.

So, yes, she will be getting married next August.

And so that's very exciting.

And you know, 'cause she's outta the house.

It's me.

I have all these other interests that I get to do.

So I've started dragon Boat Racing.

What is it?

Dragon Boat Racing.

What is that?

I've never heard of that.

It's, it is addictive.

Really?

Yeah.

So you're in a big, long boat.

There's 20 paddlers in the boat.

And you have a steers person and you have a drummer and

Oh, wow.

Yeah, and they're 250 meter races.

500 meters.

Is like crew, what we call in America, where you people are.

The Naval Academy has, I always see them out in Chesapeake Bay.

So it's not, it's similar.

Okay.

But not exactly the same.

Right.

You paddle one side, like they're, you're, you have a paddle partner and you

Okay.

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun.

You're out there doing that?

Oh yeah.

Wow.

It's a lot of fun.

When do you do it?

Like in the mornings or

-? No, in the evening.

Okay.

After.

Right now, we get out there and we get to watch the sunset on the bay.

Beautiful.

It's beautiful.

Yeah.

And then we paddle in the dark.

That's great exercise too, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Wow.

It's amazing.

What a neat hobby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Having a lot of fun with that.

I betcha.

Mm-hmm.

And so somebody's booming on the drums back there, like to keep everybody in at

the front.

Yeah, they're at the front of boat.

Okay.

Yeah.

To keep their, everyone at the same pace.

What kind of music do you listen to?

What do you like?

Oh, again, I listen to everything.

Yeah.

I do listen to everything.

My daughter is a musician, so

Okay.

she's always playing music and it's like, oh, I like that.

Oh, I like

Keeps you young.. Yeah.

And, but I do like jazz.

Do you?

I do like jazz.

Yes.

Yeah, I do too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

It's, so I have a lot of that on my playlist.

Read any good books lately?

So I am a Stephen King fan.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

So I've read all of his books.

I'm currently working on his new one.. And, enjoying every page.

Well, this has been great getting to know you, Nancy.

Yeah.

It's been wonderful.

I wish you the best.

It's an amazing system.

150 years old.

Mm-hmm.

Going all CNG.

Building a new bus barn, expanding your service by 50%.

I mean, you're in the golden era, man.

This is awesome.

This is life.

This is great, right?

Congratulations.

Thanks for being on the show today.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Transit Unplugged, the world's

number one transit executive podcast.

I'm Julie Gates, executive producer of the podcast.

Many thanks to the team that makes this show happen.

Host and producer Paul Comfort, producer Chris O'Keeffe, editor

Patrick Emile, associate producer Cyndi Raskin, and consultants Dan Meisner

and Jonas Woos at Bumper Transit.

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