Transcript: LRT Monitoring Framework Established - Light Rail Transit Sub-Committee - March 31, 2026 | Summary 589

LRT Monitoring Framework Established - Light Rail Transit Sub-Committee - March 31, 2026

Sound check. One, two, three. Sound check. One, two, three. Let's try that again. Good afternoon and welcome to light rail transit subcommittee meeting of March 31st, 2026. We have quorum present, so we'll get started and I'd like to call the meeting to order officially. A reminder that all your electronic devices should be switched to a non-audible function during committee meetings. with us today uh representing quorum online we have councelor Matt Francis in the chambers we have councelor casar councelor Huang and councelor crretch myself uh we have our non- voting members online uh Susie Braithweight we have Julia Hamill as well as Lee Stats and in the room we have Brenda Wilson Carl Andress Dina Mazic Amanda Stringer Sarah Mayo and Tom Cooper did I miss anybody who might be online Sarah, Caitlyn Craraven is online. I didn't hear the others. Sarah, Sarah Bour, thank you for joining us. And Sean Ferris. Okay. Thank you committee members for being here. Uh, may I please have a mover and second to approve the agenda as it is out? Uh, can councelor Huang mover and seconded by councelor Crutch. Any discussion on the agenda items? Seeing none, we'll move on to a show of hands vote. All those in favor? Thank you. That carries on to declarations of interest. Are there any to declare at this time? Seeing none, we'll move on to adoption of our minutes from the previous meeting which was held on December 12th, 2026. May I please get a mover and seconder? Moved by councelor Casar, seconded by councelor Hang. Any discussion on our minutes? Seeing none, if I could get a show of hand vote. Thank you, councelor Francis. Yep. That carries on to items for information. Uh committee members, we have one agenda item here, 7.1 peed 26069, which is change tracking program for the Hamilton light rail transit. Um this will include a presentation. So we will I'll pass that over to uh director shik to do the introductions and line up the report. Thank you madam chair. Uh my name is Abdul Shek, director LRT project office and I would like to provide a brief introduction of the report for information that is before you today. Uh the title is change tracking program for the Hamilton light rail transit. This report responds to the LRT subcommittee motion you know requiring the city to establish baseline of measures so that we can track changes along the LRT corridor over time. In response to that motion, staff has previously presented the terms of reference and a separate report on a proposed list of 38 indicators which we plan to monitor in coming years. So today we are presenting data on these 38 indicators to establish a baseline and we intend to report back annually to track changes over time against these baseline measure which will be presented today. So Farhad Shella, manager of LRT technical services and approval coordination has been leading this task and in close collaboration with several service area across the city and some of them are present here today online and here as well and Farad will now walk you through the presentation and uh we'll provide an overview of the report and following the presentation we will be happy to respond to your question. Thank you, Abdul. In my notes, I have Good afternoon, Madame Chair, members of LRT subcommittee. Good afternoon. Thanks for having us. My name is Farah Shalo, manager of technical services and approvals coordination with the city's LRT project office. As Abdul mentioned, the presentation will provide the first set of deliverables for the Hamilton LRT change tracking program, including baseline conditions for 38 indicators, as well as the initial changes within the change tracking areas were available. A few items on background. At the September 20th, 2024, this group approved by motion that the staff be directed to report back to the LRT subcommittee respecting a terms of reference for establishing a baseline for measures that would enable the city to track changes over time with respect to a wide and comprehens comprehensive range of metrices metrics including economic, environmental, and social changes. work progressed with the framework presented and approved at the November 15, 2024 LRT subcommittee meeting and the preliminary list of recommended indicators approved at the June 26th, 2025 meeting. The purpose of the report presented today is to display the baseline conditions for the 38 change tracking indicators for which the regular change tracking will the changes will be tracked on a regular basis to inform and social, environmental and economic and cultural changes within the areas of change tracking. Speaking of areas, this slide shows the stretch of Hamilton LRT through five change tracking areas, one per wart, which precisely align with the sub areas identified and proposed in major transit station areas, MTSA in short, final report August 2023. kind reminder that MTSA is subject to approval by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and as a result the boundaries may be subject to adjustments. Furthermore, per request received at the last subcommittee meeting, the map also identifies the overlapping neighborhoods associated with each area. With extensive care and support by nearly 20 city service areas and a Hamilton Police Service, the LRT project office refined and validated 38 change tracking indicators based on feedback received from the LRT subcommittee meeting uh members. A special thanks to staff from GIS team in peed's heritage and urban design for their efforts helping my office retrieving information for many of the indicators in front of you today. This work would not have been possible without their support. This slide is a quick snapshot of the indicators for which baseline conditions have been established and reported. And as you can see, they're grouped into their most appropriate aspects of change, social, environmental, economic, and cultural. Appendix B of the report details definitions, assumptions, baseline year, and reporting frequency for each indicator. Getting into the data of the indicators for the indicators I would like to highlight that although we are studying the LRT areas changes we will observe over years can be attributed to many LRT unrelated LRT factors such as city programs policies regular capital maintenance works and furthermore policy or regulatory changes attributed to other levels of government or unprecedented circumstances can also result in changes. The data generation reporting for change tracking indicators used in this program are based on data internally available to city staff. Indicators relating to safety and crime severity draw on datas provided by Hamilton Police Service. Data provided in appendix C to the report is somewhat self-explanatory for most cases. However, additional narrative have been provided in the report for further elaboration. More detailed information can be requested and the LRT project office can make arrangements working with the relevant service areas to provide that information to you outside the program. Also, I would like to highlight that the indicators are intended to draw changes compared to their baseline or previous status at a particular point in time. A point in time observation is not a definite indication of how well an indicator may be performing nor a definite correlation to any particular cause. I'd like to provide an overview of some examples of how information was presented in the report. The first example is where we reported on access to jobs by transit data supported by the city's transit strategic planning team. Looking at this example, you can see information is available for two consecutive years and hence a percentage from one year to the next year in terms of their change can be calculated as shown in the table and the graph per tracking area. For example, you can see the number of jobs reachable by transit within 45 minutes is available for 2024 and 2025 per area and therefore a percentage change between the two years can be calculated. And as you can see, access to jobs by transit improved for all tracking areas between 2024 and 2025. The next example, there are two examples I'd like to bring up in this category. The diagram information on the left is information from for supply of social and community housing provided by the city's community and social housing. In this example, we have data for 2023 and therefore only a row of numbers are shown and graphed. On the right, you will see information on affordability for rental accommodation also provided by the city's housing policy and relations. In this example, information is presented for one year 2021 with affordability defined as the percentage of rental or owned households spending less than a certain threshold on shelter related matters. Future reports will show change in percentage over years, say from 2021 to 2026, as this information is available every five years. As an example, from the graph on the right, you can see that 60.1% of households in ward 1 have access to affordable rental accommodation. The third example acknowledging GIS team in PED's heritage and urban design team uh providing as they provided a good chunk of the data to our office. This example is where information is available for one year. However, we were able to show trends across the tracking area. For instance, we are able to identify the number of youth in 2021 per tracking area and also show the percentage of youth of the total population across the tracking area. For instance, in 2021 for tracking area 1, 6,515 youth have been recorded in tracking area one. That is roughly 55% of the population in this area. Appreciating Hamilton Police Service. The last example relates to an indicator where weighted indexes are used. These numbers are not counts or nor quantities. As you can see in the table, the overall uh crime severity is measured in weighted harm index. That is a summary measure of the seriousness of police reported crime within a geographical area. More serious offenses such as homicide and serious assaults carry substantially higher weights than less serious offenses such as mischief or minor property damage. As a result, the harmless score reflects changes in the severity and composition of crime, not the number of incidents. Generally, the overall crime severity was highest in change tracking area areas two and three, indicating that these areas experienced the greatest concentration of the overall crime severity. The information on this slide also shows that between 2024 and 2025 the overall crime severity declined across all areas. Few final remarks. The LRT project office will continue working closely with Metroinks to establish appropriate communication and engagement firms to interact with businesses and residents adjacent to the corridor during the project's development and implementation. Furthermore, LRT project office is leading conversations with the city's business development uh consultants team within the economic development division to identify opportunities and to propose suitable programs to support existing businesses and attract new investments. I would also like to highlight that the idea framework has been a guiding principle in the development of many of the indicators and will continue to be applied to identify gaps where additional indicators may be essential to reflect the residences to reflect the experiences of equity deserving populations. In terms of citywide trends, this program is at its very earliest stages. Data however is available citywide and for most of the indicators and the staff intent to investigate and report in future years on relevant trends by drawing comparisons for the data for the remainder of the city. Lastly, with successful tracking of change in the next few years, staff can explore data collection automation tools such as enhanced data presentation and platforms such as dashboards and color-coded maps to better identify the information. Today's recommendation is simple that this LRT subcommittee to receive the report respecting change tracking program for Hamilton LRT transit staff are staff are aiming for the next reporting in the first quarter of 2027. And with that I conclude and I pause if there are any questions or comments. I actually go back but if there are any questions. Sure. While you make your way back to your seat at the bench, uh to the rest of my committee members around the table, if you have any questions or comments on the presentation slashreport, you can indicate by pressing the circle button by your microphone and that will show up for me as your chair to know that you've added yourself to the speakers list. For those of you who are joining virtually, if you could use your hand raised um option so that the clerks can be able to populate the speakers list, that'd be great. So, first up, we have councelor Casar. Thank you, Chan. Just adding a little suspense. Um, through you, thank you very much for the presentation and responding to that direction. I think it's a an excellent list of metrics to measure over time. Even from what you can see today, I think it's enlightening just with one or maybe even two uh points of data for each. Um I just did have a question about the environmental metrics. One thing that's not on there is air quality which is something uh chair that I think would be quite relevant and would expect to see improvement through a modal shift. I mean there's an example in in Paris, France that is over the last 10 years they've made amazing modal shift and the air pollution and air quality indexes are transformative. Uh so it's something that I think would be important to track. So the question through you is did staff consider that are there barriers or is that something that could be considered as a potential ad? Thank you. Through you madam chair. Thank you very much for the question. Yes staff did account consider to measure uh emissions and under this bucket. uh we concluded that item can can wait for when the project is complete and LRT is in operation to get a very good understanding of how modal shift is impacting environmental emissions and envir environmental changes. Tracking emissions during construction as you can imagine may not be a very useful indication of how environmental changes are happening within the areas but a staff did consider that and we plan to bring it back when the LRT is in operation to assess implications on modal shift. Great thank you. Um, I'd like to drill into that a little bit if I could chair because within that there's emissions which you know greenhouse gas emissions and other chemicals whatever they might be but there's also just the air quality of residents uh baseline data through construction and then post project when it's live. So I guess I don't quite get why it wouldn't be important to baseline that metric as we are baselining all the others. So I just like clarity on that and is there actually any barrier to doing that because I think that's important to include if that's clear through you chair. Absolutely through you madam chair I can elaborate we have I understand as part of our homework there was a program the city had access to and we have baseline information uh already available. The only thing is that that program expired and we for us to continue doing it on a yearly basis that would be subject to uh resources and and additional sensors to be installed. We can always explore. Uh so we have a baseline uh through you madam chair which we can draw on and get a sense of when again a staff recommendation is to is to use the baseline but then do a secondary monitoring when the LRT is in operation to get a sense of how LRT is helping with the environment changes in travel patterns uh reducing uh auto ownership to get a better sense of that we have a baseline for your um for your information. We just uh suggest not to track during the construction phases as uh the information may not be very useful as well as uh there will be implications on on resourcing and equipment to be installed along the corridor to do the tracking for us through the madam chair if you allow me. So yeah, council kasad that was ready. So we going to take back and we will explore because I remember you know like there was some discussion about uh expenses right because there were some uh sensors already installed they were expired so we will go back and explore and then we will bring more information in our upcoming reports. Yeah that'd be appreciated because I think there is interest around this horseshoe from both council members and other representatives on and air quality. So I I appreciate that chair and I'll I'll leave it there for now. Appreciate it. I've taken a note that it'll come back uh with further information in terms of how it can be embedded not only for the baseline but uh going on for assessing the impact. Next up, we have um Committee Member Andress. Thank you. Apologize for that. Uh yes. So through through the chair, I just wanted to uh ask a little bit about uh integration with um Metroinks um reporting um specifically around community benefits and the four pillars that Metroinks has assigned. I know that Metroinks doesn't regularly attend these meetings, but um do city staff have plans to integrate the Metroinks reporting on um you know number of jobs created through their pillar one through employment or business supports or any of a framework for the city to report on and track um Metroinks's performance against their their own um their own commitments. Thank you through the madam chair councelor sorry member Andrews thank you for the question uh the whole intention was to provide long-term uh tracking right so what we thought that you know uh metro links data will be on a just a construction time frame right so the whole intention based on a actually we actually did with the terms of reference and terms of reference word probably mentioned that it's going to be a long-term So what we are mentioning pillar one, pillar two, pillar three, what metings do through the community benefit that will remain for only C-section time frame but if that's a suggestion or through a motion from the council we can go back and talk to Metro and see if we can track those data or not right but through the terms of reference that was not included uh because we were focusing more on a city available data going forward. Yeah. So, just a a little training for everybody around the chambers. The microphone system has shifted. So, once your microphone's been activated, don't touch the button. Okay. Um, it will remain active until you're done your speaking time and then you turn it off. And then we will turn it off or you can Okay, perfect. Uh, okay. Thank you for for that understanding. So at this at this this time um we're very much looking at um just changes from um con construction to post post construction and um okay thank thank you very much for for that that that clarification. Um, another indicator I just wanted to sort of uh uh ask about is some of the um compositions of of tracking in terms of um ethnicity uh immigrant patterns and documentations. I know that that was originally discussed um when some of these changes were were being proposed for tracking to get an understanding of um what might be happening to specific communities or to specific uh uh areas. Um, as as the LRT changes within this area, and I don't see any of those demographic informations listed here, is there a plan to be looking at um I know you have seniors and you have uh children and families, but is there any plan to to look at specific other categories listed in um Statistics Canada's uh tracking? Thank you very much. Through you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the question. The indicators in front of you are very consistent with what we showed last time, but if you have a recommendation on any particular uh grouping or demographics that you want us to I I I believe I heard im immigrants. Yeah, I don't recall but we can definitely take it back and see if our GIS has access to that information uh through you madam chair. Most of the information, I would say all of these were meant to be at no cost available to CTS staff and here we have them in front of you sharing with you. Um, but if I know exactly which demographics you're pursuing, I can definitely get back to our GIS team and see if you're able to create a baseline and continue reporting on that should be no problem. Okay, thank you. Um, next up we have councelor Hang. Thank you. Question around um when you're actually taking these point in time sort of snapshots uh because I uh I know that this is information that's readily available. I'm just looking at the jobs number because every year economic development does an employment survey and so that happens in the summertime. So I wonder if there's like when are you because then we should feasibly have more updated numbers because there's been two summers since 2023. though through you madam chair very fair question even I when I was working with all service areas I struggle to bring everything into a consistent timeline is this at the very end of the year is this halfway through is this a third quarter and many staff you know they they mentioned to me that their information changes throughout the year to your point uh and um so right now at this point everything you see here is as of December mber of the year the previous year. Now if there were any fluctuations ahead of that uh through you madam chair would not have been captured. So we try to capture information on just to be consistent or for the sake of simplicity and communication. You can imagine if I were to if you were to break it down into qu uh quarters per year it would be substantial um maybe difficult to report and discuss. uh but I'm really open to suggestions at this point for clarity to your question these are December are based on the last year kind of information okay through through the madam chair I just would like to add so we plan to bring uh annually all the information right so and uh at that time we can always get information from LRT committee that okay can you bring additional information at midpoint right so we can bring those information right now these are as per the calendar year But you know like when we are bringing the next report you can always uh you know like uh ask through motion and then we will bring the addition report if if it is required. Right. Okay. Um chair I wanted to ask about how this tracking data connects with our open data because we definitely have all of this information in open data. Is there an opportunity to just even have it be a dashboard? um because then we can just pull the wi pull the widgets the whatever whatever the robots um into a dashboard type setting. So I wanted to ask uh have you connected with say CTO to actually talk about it from an open data perspective that way it's kind of lessens your workload if you can pull the data that's already available on our open data dashboard through you madam chair uh to a point hopefully I don't lose my job right um sure absolutely we still need you don't worry about that I don't think I'm gonna make your life easier that's all absolutely so through you madam chair Um yes. So there is there is a vision um kind of an ambitious idea. We have uh to to turn this into an automated platform to your point a dashboard a colorcoded map because a lot of this information is already available. It's just a matter of bringing them into a firm which can be uh easily accessible. you may be will be able to filter to use from drop down which quadrants of information you're looking for or which year. Um so it is as it's part of our um vision to create at this point I we thought to go with lowhanging fruit report them in this kind of a very manual uh process but once we are comfortable with the type of indicators and the significance and the value they bring uh then we will transition but I can tell you um following this session we will be exploring with uh with IT GIS and how those platforms can come together to provide exactly the environment you mentioned of. My last question for you chair is on number of businesses started and number of businesses closed and um that's something that I know our Hamilton business center probably has that data but it might be kind of nice just to have it be all included in this um baseline. Um, I think that one area that I'm going to be particularly mindful of and really watching is the number of business supports through Metro Links and through a lot of the questions I've been asking in the past. But perhaps just to put a finer point on it is how many businesses have opened, how many businesses have closed throughout this entire process and just to have that number all in the same report. So I wonder if I can make that ask. Thank you through the madam chair councel. Yes, we will be taking that information for your information we already working very closely with economic development and we are actually looking at you know because they are looking for extra resources right so we'll be working with metro links if they can complement the additional resources to track the businesses while they are construction and those kind of things. So definitely we'll be taking that information and talking to metro links and economic development. Thank you so much. Uh, next up we have councelor crutch. Start. I'll start broadly. I think the way that we're talking about this is going to be confusing for the public. The phrase change tracking, which I know we've been using all along. Now that we're actually get a set of indicators and we're thinking about doing this, um, I think that the word indicator should be used and we should come up with a word to describe what kind of indicators they are, right? that would make I think a little bit more clear for people because of course immediately when you say change tracking the very first thing anyone working with the document thinks of is track changes like I'm just I'm just from a legibility and um understandability perspective it's very cognitively difficult to understand what this work actually is so I think the next step we have to take is just to rename the work to make it clear are these indicators about the comm whatever description word before the word indicators community indicators I'm not proposing one let's be clear but I think that's really important from a communications perspective and I think a dashboard report is really helpful. I think also you mentioned you're going to be working with GIS folks and I think the in terms of lowhanging fruit. I'm not sure if you work with the GIS folks here at the city of Hamilton who are very very good. I have a lot especially around census data and so I know that we can use the GIS information inside of the census data because Hamilton asks for ward level census data. I won't get too technical here, but because we ask for ward level census data, we have more information than most municipalities have when it comes to census data. So, we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. These indicators are important. We don't have to start from a whole fresh scratch of indicators. We could also include census data, just all the census data. And that's just a mathematical exercise. That's not an exercise that requires any manual labor apart from the GIS person mapping it using GIS software in the areas we've identified. But we can we can extract that for 2021 and then we do it in 2026 and then when it happens again in 2030, right? So I think it's important for us to think about that because every 5 years we have that census data and that's a very good set of indicators. Some of them about immigration, some about other things um that we may not need to track. It's the lowest the lowest hanging fruit. Um the last thing I'll say is I think we need a motion about air quality because I think it's important that it shows up as an indicator and I think we need baseline data as soon as humanly possible. I do agree that measuring air quality during construction can be problematic because particulate matter during construction especially will increase obviously in the air. You'll have more dust particulate matter. You people try to control the dust particulate matter and that'll all blend to the air quality. Still, it's super important to measure the air quality during construction. So what I want to say is regardless of whether or not it may seem technically strange to do it, the people who live in the area will be breathing it in regardless. So I think it's important to say for the years before what is our air quality? And if it means getting more resources, again, I think that's why council just bring a motion forward to say, let's get more resources to put some more emissions monitors there. One of the major benefits of LRT is that there'll be cleaner air in our downtown core, which everyone's looking forward to. So, I think a lot of the work we're doing here should be just measured measured against the benefits LRT is saying. That's where I think councelor Mor Wilson started with this journey in 2024 when she brought forward this motion to say, hey, at the end of this, I want to be able to clap a lot and say, look at all the amazing things that we did. we turn this situation here into a much better situation. And I want to be able to also identify areas where maybe we didn't do as well. So that when we get to the end of that journey, when LRT is up and running and we see, oh gosh, this is actually a negative impact here, here, here, here, and here, we have some measurables that we can say, how do we go back? Because to councelor Wayne's post point partly, it's good to have that overall number, but of businesses opening and closing, but actually that's not helpful um on its own. It's only helpful in concert with looking at which businesses closed in which areas and which to reopen because the overall number of course we know there's just zero chance no businesses will close. Like can we just say that now? Zero chance that no businesses will close. It's happened in every LRT project around the world because we're changing the material conditions of the place where businesses are operating. The question is how do we lessen the impact and mitigate the impact to make sure that people can thrive, survive, do what they want to do? Because some people might just say, you know what, LT is coming. This is a struggle for me. I've had a business open for 55 years. I'm going to retire now. I don't want to go through that challenge. Other people will say, I'm hungry for the challenge. I want my business to thrive and succeed through LRT so I can be there on the other side. And individual business owners have to make those decisions for themselves. But I think it's really important that we think about those three things. So one, I'll just say it again a summary because I said that quickly. One is just change the name, talk about this differently. Um the second is that lowhanging fruit that exists through GIS in terms of census data that's available to the city already because we have ward profiles too, right? And all that information is anchored through the city's open data portal and that's all GISable information. Um and then last I'll say is that I think councelor Casar and if you want to bring it to the next meeting or whenever you know instead of drafting something on the floor now but we do think you need a motion about air quality because I think it's important to benchmark it before during construction actually to measure the impacts of the construction and then and then afterwards as well. Thank you. Thank you. I did make note as chair uh on potential amending language not only to integrate the air quality but also the points that councelor Huang raised around integration of number of businesses closed number of businesses opened. Next up we have member Mayo and then I'll pass the chair to vice chair for one more question. Hi. Um, thank you uh for this. Um, it's great to see the progress on this uh file and um and that you know you gave us clear examples of what the graphs might look like is very helpful. Um maybe with later on with um Tom from the round table um we could talk about finding some way it's around income and poverty and how it's complex because economic conditions can change and then there's also displacement and how do you separate out those? So it's it's just tracking poverty rate is maybe not the best but um there something around around income would be helpful and um and and but then the problem is it's only every 5 years and change is much more um uh frequent than that and I'll um add support to U member Andress in terms of adding something uh more equity indicators um and the census the The problem with the census is that not only is it every 5 years, but it's very delayed. So the 2026 census data, we won't have anything remotely useful till like mid late 2027 and then really the more interesting stuff will be 2028, 2029. So it takes so long. I think we really have to think about other annual me data sources that aren't on here. So CHC's um has annual uh housing survey. So the housing the two housing indicators are three. They're all just census based and um there are I'm thinking about them. It's not that obvious which ones would would make sense but but um having at least one indicator from CHC which is annual I think would be helpful. But then the other thing I'm this week at planning committee the staff presented on the relocation bylaw and they had the eviction data and my experience with that eviction data is that um it is available quite frequently and in fact right down to the postal code level because it's um uh justice data you it's sort of like you have access to the to the records about um about uh files in the in the system. So um eviction data would be available very frequently at low levels of geography and would be very relevant. Um so I think that one um could be great to add. And then lastly um in the graphs to be adding the city average I think will be especially helpful because um you know the changes that are happening may not obviously we uh there are changes going to be happening in the city as well not just in the LRT and so do areas so to separate to have at least visual uh analysis of that would be helpful. Thank you, member. Mayor Mayo, um I didn't capture all of the pieces that you itemized as being um potential additions. So, if you are able to send it over by email uh to clerk Macintosh, that would be beneficial. Thank you. Uh next up, we have member and then myself. you missed the instructions. Don't touch this. Don't touch the mic until you're done. Thank you, Madame Chair. I just wanted to take the opportunity to to um amplify what um member Andressa said. I think it's important to be captured data around equity in particular along the corridor very particular areas of the corridor uh are a number of racialized business owners historically and we've seen we have seen the demise of many of them but increasingly so with the LRT we are concerned about that being even more diminished so it' be great to get a picture of what's happening to racialized owners in that area along the Tisdale back to the downtown area. There has been historically uh center of um black businesses that you know people can tell you stories of place based uh discussion around Hamilton and its history and we've seen less and less of those business driving and I think it'd be important to get a sense as to what is happening. We've seen what happened in Toronto, the little Jamaica. So, what are we going to do to make sure we mitigate any of those situations happening in those neighborhoods as well as others, but having an office there at the Afro Canadian Carbon Association, I'm right in the neighborhood. So, I do hear and see things along that area. So, I just wanted to amplify that and to reinforce the need for capturing that data. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay. through you, Vice Chair Crutch. Um, under economics, so adding on to councelor Hang's point about number of businesses open and closed, type of business. I noticed that food premises is listed, which is a really important equity piece. Uh, access to food has already been indicated as being a um gap uh especially along the entire LRT corridor and it's been part of the discussion for decades. Uh perhaps this will bring some equity and access to food. Um but then generally speaking, types of businesses which would be important I think for city data tracking as well in terms of um I think it correlates as well to the jobs pieces as well. Um I'm going to add my voice on the air quality piece around uh the construction phase. I think it's important for us to demonstrate excellence throughout this with our partners at Metro Links. Uh the municipality has put together incredibly important air quality mitigation best practices during construction for residential development. Um I think this is an opportunity to set the bar higher and to say to major infrastructure projects that are publicly funded that we have an obligation and a duty to the residents um and the creatures who live here. And so from that perspective, I think it's really important to integrate that and um happy to explore what that looks like from a resourcing perspective. I know that several of the counselors along the LRT corridor um have been advocating for air quality monitoring and we've allocated um discretionary funding in order to enable the municipality to have those monitors throughout the throughout the community of impact. Um so I see no other speakers. I have no further questions. I'll take back the chair and move to our legislative clerk coordinator actually right technically uh to see about our motion. Okay, so just bear with us. We're adding in member Mayo's info. Councelor Crutch will provide some background music in the form of humming. And once those words are clarified, we'll get it up on the screen so everybody has an opportunity to review the motion before consideration. Okay, it's coming up. the gerbles in the background sending the information from the laptop to the projector. There it is. Therefore, be it resolved that staff be directed to report back to the LRT subcommittee respecting adding whoop adding as indicators for baseline and annual reporting during construction and postmodal shift to the change tracking program for the Hamilton LRT. Uh actually, if I can just um shift that quickly. Um, so therefore be it resolved that staff change the name of the change tracking program for Hamilton LRT to indicators of social, environmental, and economic impact. Real plain language. People know what they're looking for. Yeah. social, environmental and economic impacts. And then the second portion would be that staff be directed to integrate the following categories. And then we can get rid of that lovely paragraph and add in air quality. Sorry, air quality. Um, type of businesses, number of businesses open, number of businesses closed. Um, then the third piece, integrating member Mayo's recommendation. If you want to indicate with your microphone, um, I'd be happy to entertain any further amendments. Yeah. So, just wait for the microphone to be turned on. There you go. Member mail. Maybe just change that one the to just inequality or poverty measure or eviction data. Um uh as you know, kind of staff can work on that like we don't have to be rid of the rest of Yeah, I really love concise language. Thank you. Um and then member Myers's point around um equity indicators. So it's equity indicators of population for residents and business owners. Member Mary just to be clear. Okay. Okay. I'm going to pause there because we did some on the floor changes um and open it up first of all to my committee members and then get response from staff if there's any further clarity that staff would recommend. Okay, over to you councelor Crutch. Just to make this a bit clear. So where it said Hamilton LRT for social and environmental and economic impacts, just reverse the language to make it shorter by saying to social, environmental, and economic indicators. Just get rid of the word indicators up there. Just that's just more straightforward. And then it leads with the words we're talking about, right? The description is these are social, environmental, and economic indicators. Right. Okay. So, we're striking the word uh indicators up top front. Yeah. Right after LRT carry. Yeah. So, Hamilton LRT 2. Yeah. Get rid of four as well. And then we're capitalizing social, environmental, comma, and economic indicators. I consider all commas to be housekeeping. So, I'm happy for those to happen later. All right, it's good. We got it. And indicators is capitalized because we're changing the name of the the entire report. Okay, that's it. That was the intervention. Interven. Interveneed. Solid. Anybody else have any further amendments? Okay, over to staff. Oh, my apologies. Member Andress, then over to staff. Uh uh thank you uh chair. Um just to further on member Mayo's comments around um uh rental uh units. Um I know that there's some good metrics here for affordability of rental accommodations, affordability of of owner, but yeah number uh number types of units. Um CHC does regular as you've mentioned every year reporting um on on the the rental makeups including uh numbers, type, bedrooms, cost um and that that data would be a good thing to have and then you could easily baseline both against the city average but uh you know a pre-LRT uh completion and post LRT completion and that's just readily available data. So member Andress, just so I'm clear, you're seeking to add rental rental unit type. The CHC reports regularly on uh types, bedrooms, costs. So rental unit data. Yeah, rental unit data. Okay, fair. Thank you. integrated. All right, over to staff. How does that feel? Does that seem achievable, doable? Uh, true. Madam chair, I will I will start and then I will have um I will let director Abdul to provide more insight. Uh let's start off. Um so a lot of the information I would say one-third of the information you see in front of you are from GIS. Uh census data we did not recreate. Um in fact all we had to do with with them was to make sure two things. One is that the data is available internally already to the city. The most important part was we wanted to make sure we are able to cut data for the MTSA boundaries. So like the five areas that we showed you, if the information was not available at that level of um granularity, we we um we are not we are not suggesting to report because the intent is to be able to have the data internally accessible to the city and that the information is available at at that level of um granularity at MTSA level. Um we did look at following our last meeting um on this topic um sources like uh CM CHMC CHMC data um based on the homework uh I did and I learned a lot from that through Madam Chair. Uh thanks for the opportunity to learn um working with GIS and staff that data is not available at MTSA um level and the information suggested was to uh use census data. So therefore we couldn't really draw on um on CHMC source. In terms of um the two indicators you see in front of you on affordability, on rental and ownership are the closest that the staff were able to come following the last meeting. I I took in your suggestions on um unit breaking down by unit number of bedrooms. Again, uh that information from CHMC was not available at the at the boundaries that we were looking for. They're available as citywide but not at that level that we were looking for. Uh if the staff are mistaken, please please let us know. But that was part of our due diligence. Um air quality well received we will explore. That's something we need to take back and and look at to start reporting baseline as well as during construction. Thank you for that comment. Um in terms of businesses open and close, great indicator. We like to take that take that back and explore um director Sheek if there's anything else you would like to add. Yeah, thank you very much uh madam chair through you madam chair uh I think that this is a good start. So we will have a motion we will take that information and what Farhad has mentioned we will report back in a report that you know why we cannot track and uh you know what are the limitations and those kind of thing what for just mentioned so we will bring those information back in terms of uh you know the name I would probably start with the name first uh we have actually added social uh social cultural as well in addition to environment so uh sorry we have added cultural indicator in addition to social, environmental and uh there were three right initially economical. So do you like to add as a cultural because I think this is probably conformance to the citywide we are always looking at those four parameters social environmental economic and cultural we can add that one or we can use uh like I'm looking at just waterloo uh they have the same program they are using as a monitoring uh data in Hamilton LRT so we could use that one if you think that you know we shouldn't be going into those three because it could add up more uh you know like I don't want to limit those to three four categories but if there are more data available in any other categories we can bring so it's just a suggestion in addition to we also heard about citywide comparison so we already have mentioned of a report we will be exp it's not mentioned in a motion but we will be exploring which I heard uh today at the LT subcommittee that we will be taking that information and see if we can compare against the citywide information and dashboard right so we will be exploring so post for information. What we Thank you for that. So, director um noted and manager noted um so perhaps we could just leave the language as is and then all of the points that you've indicated can be further flushed out in the report back and then if there's any further decisions for the committee to make based on the information you bring forward, we'll do so. Okay. Uh so moved by councelor Casar, second by councelor Hang. Uh no further discussion on the motion. All those in favor electronic vote. Um, the LC has told me those gerbles again in the background. It's the first vote of the meeting. What business? It takes it a while. It should be up for those who can vote electronically. It is up It's a very digital thumbs up from councelor Casar. It's carried 50. Thank you. Um, okay. On to items for consideration, which is amendments to our outstanding business list. May I please get a mover in secondary? Moved by councelor Crutch, second by councelor Huang uh to put the amendments for the outstanding business list on the floor. Any conversation? Seeing none, that is also an electronic vote to which councelor Crutch is voting in favor and that carries. Thank you. Uh any other motions committee members or notices of motions? Seeing none, uh, thank you everybody, especially our non- voting members, for taking the time to, uh, carve out of your day to be join us for our LRT subcommittee. Thank you to the staff, all all your work in the background preparing our report for today. Thank you to the legislative clerk team for supporting um, the participation of this meeting. Take care everyone. Meeting adjourned.

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