Local Travel

The conference takes place at eight venues in two areas of Hamilton: downtown, and McMaster University’s main campus (in the Westdale neighbourhood). The two areas are well connected to each other by public transit buses (referred to by locals as the HSR, for “Hamilton Street Railway”). Cash fare (no change given) for the bus is $3.00. Alternately, the Presto card is a reloadable transit card whose use discounts the fare to $2.30 per ride (the card is available at any Fortinos grocery store in Hamilton, and reloadable online with a credit card). Full information about the HSR can be found at https://www.hamilton.ca/hsr-bus-schedules-fares but the following paragraphs give a summary of the information most pertinent to ICLC 2016 attendees.

Taking the bus downtown from the main McMaster campus: Two sets of bus routes connect the McMaster campus with downtown. From the bus stop next to the Divinity College and the McMaster Museum of Art, on the south side of the street, all buses will take you to downtown Hamilton (you will see buses labelled #1A, #5C and #51). Alternately, from the bus stop on the south-west corner of Main Street West and University Avenue, at the south entrance to the campus, all buses there will also take you to downtown Hamilton (you will see buses labelled #5 and #10). At either of these stops if you see a bus just labelled “Main and MacNab” that will get you there as well.

From either of these stops get on any bus and then get off at Main and MacNab. The stops are announced on the bus, and you should also feel free to ask the bus driver how to get off at Main and MacNab. From Main and MacNab all of the workshop venues (on Wednesday), art crawl venues (on Friday) and the algorave venue (on Saturday) night are approximately ten minutes walk away (walk east to James St N, then walk north on James St N to all workshop and art crawl venues; for the Spice Factory walk north on James St N then turn right and go one block east on Cannon then turn right again and walk a few steps south on Hughson). Depending on the time of day, average waiting time is around 10 minutes and typical travel time is around 15 minutes. Plan for somewhat longer wait times in the evening. The last bus from the university area to downtown leaves at 2:03 AM on weekdays (from the southwest corner of Main and Emerson).

Getting to the main McMaster campus from downtown: A series of bus stops starts at the north-west corner of King St and James St in the centre of downtown, and runs west along King St. Any bus from any of these stops will take you the McMaster campus (you’ll see buses labelled #1A, #5B, #5C, #10, #51 and #52). Depending on the time of day, average waiting time is around 10 minutes and typical travel time is around 15 minutes. Plan for somewhat longer wait times in the evening. The last bus back to the university area from downtown leaves at 1:20 AM on Weekdays and Saturdays.

Taxis: Two taxi companies operating in Hamilton are Hamilton Cab (905) 777-7777 and Blue Line Taxi (905) 525-0000. Fare between downtown and the university should be around $20 and it is customary to tip.

Social bicycles: Hamilton’s social bicycle system provides an extensive network of hubs at which, with the entry of a passcode, a bicycle can be borrowed for short trips and then returned to another hub in the system. Both the main McMaster campus and the downtown are replete with “SoBi hubs”. Rates are $4+tax for an hour, or $15+tax for a week. More information about SoBi is available at https://hamilton.socialbicycles.com/.

Parking downtown: There is a multi-level parkade on the north side of York Street just west of James that is walking distance from all downtown conference venues. On-street parking is mostly metered, with 2 hour maximums, and often free after 9 PM.

Parking on campus: Most parking lots on the main campus allow limited amounts of “visitor parking” for a day rate of $20. A far lot offers a day rate of $7 with a short, free shuttle bus (during something like normal business hours) that lets you avoid the steep walk up the hill from the far lot to the main campus. Further information about parking at McMaster is available at http://parking.mcmaster.ca/.