Time to freeze transit fares

After successive fare increases in the first three years of John Tory’s term, the mayor is finally recommending that the Toronto Transit Commission freeze the cost of riding the rocket next year.

His proposal is long overdue. In fact, Tory promised to freeze fares during the last election campaign but broke that promise for three years running, against the advice of TTC chair Josh Colle.

Worse, the price of tokens has increased every year for the past six years, eating into the budgets of many of the TTC’s poorest and most loyal riders.

Indeed, since 2009, the cost of tokens and Metropasses has gone up by roughly 33 per cent, far outpacing the rate of inflation. Cash fares now run to $3.25 for adults, while tickets, tokens and Presto fares cost $3.

At the same time, the city subsidy is just $1 per rider. That’s lower than that of other comparable North American systems, including Los Angeles ($3 U.S. per rider), New York City ($1.52 U.S.) and Montreal ($1.16).

In short, by raising fares for the past six years Toronto was actually encouraging people to choose their cars over transit. Past TTC studies suggested that a single-fare increase of just 10 cents would result in the loss of three million riders a year. And in fact, excluding seniors, ridership among adults actually declined from 434.9 million in 2015 to 427 million in 2016.

That downward spiral must be reversed if Toronto is to tackle the traffic snarls and gridlock that costs the region about $6 billion in lost productivity a year.

At the same time, the city and province should be investing in the TTC to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by people taking to their cars because they understandably don’t want to be crammed into a bus or subway car.

In fact, more than a quarter of the TTC’s bus and streetcar routes regularly exceed its crowding standards, only encouraging people to drive. That, in turn, increases pollution, which increases healthcare costs and contributes to climate change. Transportation, in fact, accounts for a third of greenhouse gas emissions in the province.

To be fair, there have been improvements at the TTC under the mayor’s watch.

His signature mass transit achievement, perhaps, was to let kids12 and under ride for free. Under that program, which was initiated in March 2015, the number of children taking transit has soared, helping poor kids navigate the city and, hopefully, developing a new generation of transit users.

In addition, as the Star’s Ben Spurr reports, the TTC opened the subway earlier on Sundays, bought hundreds of new buses, completed the rollout of the Presto fare card system, continued work on the Scarborough subway extension and installed automatic train control on Line 1 to run trains more reliably.

Still, the cost of all those improvements would have been better borne by taxpayers in general, than by increased fares on riders.

After all, when people take the TTC everyone benefits from less traffic congestion and less pollution.

That’s why city councillors should not be tempted to vote against the mayor’s proposed fare freeze to pay for the $126 million in projected increased operating costs for 2018. Nor should there be any cuts to service.

Instead, as the Star has long argued, city council should turn to general revenues to further boost TTC service, while keeping fares low. If that means a tax increase, it would be a price worth paying.

Mayor John Tory is right: After six years of increases, a freeze on Toronto Transit Commission fares is long overdue