A recent article, The Flirtation With Fare By Distance, has sparked a debate in the comment thread about the relative merits of flat vs distance-based fares, and the whole issue of how we choose to subsidize some groups of riders versus others. In a recent reply, I took strong issue with some of the concepts advanced by writers, and the thread of my argument is strong enough that it deserves to be seen in an article of its own.
There are two related comments, and I will reproduce them here to set the stage:
Rishi (@PlanGinerd) wrote:
Fare-by-distance is a tricky one that I’m not yet firmly decided on. It clearly works on many large systems worldwide, and I have tons of friends and family who live in Zone 4 or Zone 6 in London who while they do complain the Tube is expensive, they still take it daily and never ever drive or take a cab or a regional train into the core. Perhaps it can only be coupled by changing the economics/costs of driving?
I am 100% sympathetic that FBD benefits those who can afford to live closer to the core, whilst disadvantaging those who live within the borders of Toronto but farther out. I haven’t done enough research yet, but I always think about why someone who lives so far from the City of TO core, would still choose to live within our borders vs. in Peel, York, or Durham regions. Is it really the cheap access to the TTC or is it other services? In other words, what incentives are there to convince them to live in “expensive” Toronto in the first place?
My friends deep within Metrolinx and TTC are also torn. They feel that it is not the role of the operator to handle the social equity, but the role of the province through transfers and tax breaks. I ask Steve and the community, if the province was to pair FBD for all GTA transit agencies and truly integrated fares, with a tax break to help those disadvantaged, would that change your mind?
It reminds me of a conversation I had last week on Twitter with Moaz RE how social programs that give out free TTC fares would cope without tokens. I see Presto tech. as enabling if done right, and it would be easy to give out cards with balances on them, or a periodic reload to help with fares, whilst also giving valuable O-D and usage data.
Maybe I’m too much of an optimist but things like this, and exiting fare gates are commonplace and the norm in cities everywhere. Yes local context is critically important, but I think we have to get away from the nay-saying that Toronto is always different and every other best practice could never work here.
Jonathan C wrote:
Flat fares are a very ineffective way to reduce inequality as the benefit is not well-targeted to those who need the help. There are plenty of people making long trips who could afford a higher distance based fare, and plenty who struggle to pay the flat fare for short trips or end up walking long distances because they can’t justify the cost. In most cases everyone would prefer better service. If you want to help those in need then push for an increase in the low income tax credits, don’t try to use the transit system as it is a very blunt instrument.
In a way the flat fare leads the poor to live further from the core as only those who are better off can afford higher housing costs plus the flat fare. The poor service to far-flung locales also pushes commuters into cars, while those who can’t afford to drive end up trading their time for a lower fare.
My replies:
This discussion seems to be taking place as if we were proposing to introduce flat fares as a net new subsidy that would benefit people who don’t need it. If that were the case, I could certainly understand arguments for targeted rather than broad-brush subsidies.
We are not. The discussion is of the potential effect on a wide range of transit users who now have a common fare no matter how far they travel compared to what they pay today. If you want to talk about actual need, then let’s expand the debate to free fares for all children, or reduced fares for all students and seniors. During the whole debate over cheaper fares for university students, I was struck by the absence of advocates for the truly poor saying “hey, what about us”, and the hand-wringing extended to a group that on the whole comes from relatively affluent backgrounds.
I have yet to hear a cogent argument for distance-based fares beyond “other people are doing it”. Well, no, throughout much of the GTHA, “local” fares are flat. Even London UK, that oft-cited bastion of fare-by-distance, uses flat fares for its surface system with time-based transfer privileges.
Correction: London does not have time-based transfers on its surface routes, with very limited exceptions. [July 2, 2015]
The question of flat fares vs fare by distance has nothing to do with “nay-saying” or “best practices”, it is a political and social choice the city has made. If we want to talk about fare collection technology, or the best way to operate a transit system, those are fair game for criticisms of the “not invented here” syndrome so common in Toronto.
“Equity” as Toronto defines it may well mean a flat fare. Don’t forget that the pesky border with the 905 is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and problems of low market share for transit within 905 systems (i.e. for local travel in York Region, or Durham, or Mississauga) have nothing to do with fare by distance, but with built form and the relative lack of competitive transit services. Fare by distance will only “solve” the problem for trips that are now cross-border by giving them a (presumed) discount. It won’t add better bus service unless there is a substantial jump in revenue to offset costs, net costs that are higher in the 905 because of the much richer per rider subsidies.
Where people choose to live is a product of many factors including income and service (broadly defined) availability. Try living without a car out in the 905 — the TTC for all its problems is a damn sight better, and it can certainly be argued that there is a stronger, longer history of community support services within Toronto than elsewhere even if these are stronger in the “old city” than in Toronto’s suburbs. Some of this is also historical — the 905 suburbs simply didn’t exist when many families moved to the outer 416, or they were aimed at a very different demographic. Markham is not noted for its large pool of social housing.
When we speak of transit discounts as a “social service”, this is usually in the context of truly disadvantaged groups who for mainly economic reasons are deemed worthy of additional social supports. There is a big problem with arguments that they should be funded through alternative means to transit fares such as tax rebates. Social subsidy programs are chronically underfunded and have exclusionary eligibility tests. Tax credits are a wonderful thing, but they are almost always structured to benefit those who have a taxable income in the first place, and can even disproportionately benefit the well off.
If we start talking of flat transit fares generally as a “social service”, we miss the whole point that encouraging people to use transit has an economic benefit for the city by avoiding pressure for more road construction, and a general benefit to all residents by reducing the need for one or more cars in their families. This is the sort of thing that would show up in any full accounting of costs and benefits. The hidden subsidies to motorists are not subject to the same scrutiny, nor are they regarded as some sort of social service. We also build roads for the economic benefit of the trucking industry and all of its clients. Maybe we should start thinking of that as a “social service” too because it is a form of job creation.
It is very easy to characterize things we don’t want to spend money on as “social service” or even worse “welfare”, while the things we prefer (often for political and ideological reasons) as “investments”.
Any scheme that discourages transit use relative to what is and has been in place for decades is the equivalent of a “disinvestment”, almost like asset stripping where dividends are more important than the health of a company.
If you want to call me a “nay-sayer” for that attitude, you have that right, but it’s a pejorative term, an artificial, ad hominem argument that does not engage in debate of the basic principles.
I would remind you that the “nay-sayer” epithet was used by John Tory during his campaign against those who criticized SmartTrack, and we now know what a bag of crap that proposal was.
The availability of vast amounts of travel data is routinely cited by those who would move us to fare by distance. Dare I remind readers that distance-based fares have existed for much, much longer than the ability to collect this data, and they are a product of political and business decisions about pricing service, not a means to collect O-D info.
The next time you go shopping and someone makes it harder for you to get through the store because they want detailed data about your buying habits, be sure to co-operate fully.
The TTC does not, repeat, not need a mountain of O-D data to provide better service. You can find out where the riders are simply by looking at the buses and streetcars, and broad network demands can come from O-D data in the TTS survey.
They already have a mountain of data documenting the behaviour of their vehicles, and after many decades are finally starting to analyze it in ways similar to the work I have published. Problems with vehicle bunching and poor headway management contribute a great deal to crowding on the TTC. Even with this documented in excruciating detail, little is done to fix problems of “TTC culture”. This is even a double-edged sword in that with all this data, some claim that all we need to do for more capacity is to improve management and schedules, not to actually operate more service. This is a variation on the “efficiency” argument that neatly avoids an actual commitment to better service.
Let us have a debate on fare structure by all means, but let it be a real debate, not simply a fait accompli that shows up because Andy Byford and Bruce McCuaig decide to impose fare-by-distance on us all as a matter of simplicity for Presto’s implementation. The technology should serve what we, collectively as cities and a region, want to help transit achieve, not get in the way or penalize riders who happen to live in the wrong place. Let’s talk about GO Transit’s uneven handling of short trip fares and the discount structure that makes travel from Kitchener to Union Station far cheaper, by distance, than travel from Rexdale. Let’s talk about what is needed to make transit service in the 905 truly attractive so that more people will want to use it, and transit will have political support for spending on more than a few subway extensions and GO improvements.
That would be a real debate. What we have today is an utter sham.
Steve Munro 
My first thought when I read Malcolm’s and other similar comments about funding was remembering news reports from a couple of years ago about a study commissioned/funded by the Canadian Automobile Association (yes, the car people – the report was titled Where the Rubber Meets the Road: How Much Motorists Pay for the Road Infrastructure), with the document being issued by the Conference Board of Canada on their website under this news release:
Then, farther down are the statements:
(*I find it interesting that they include tolls here as “revenue,” as, with the sell-off of Highway 407 by Mike Harris, the province is no longer benefitting from toll revenue in the GTA, thereby preventing the possible earmarking of said income for highway maintenance or – heaven forbid! – transit funding …)
Is it any surprise that drivers in particular say they are squeezed already and no one should be digging deeper into their pockets for transit funding when it doesn’t directly benefit them and their daily commute? Just look at the furor, ramped up by the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), against a 0.5% tax increase, to have been collected over 10 years, to fund transit expansion and maintenance in that province. The trick pony of government “waste, waste, waste” as well as delays for Translink’s Compass Card (i.e. TTC’s “Presto”) program and repeated equipment breakdowns on Translink’s part (does this sound familiar to GTA residents about TTC operations?!?) was brought up and beaten to death by Jordan Bateman of the CTF so that 60% of voters said “No.” Ironically, this population includes, by default, the very people who use the transit system in the Vancouver area and who would *directly* benefit from structural and service improvements to the system. (Again, does this sound familiar to Toronto residents?) At least the participants in the discussion on *this* blog have the sense (thanks to you, Steve) to actually discuss the issues and options in some detail rather than claim there is a silver bullet to slay all gridlock werewolves or use trite slogans (“subways, subways, subways” to stifle and even shut down thoughtful debate.
All the news media outlets were broadcasting the finding of this CAA report back in October 2013 and various perspectives can be found on numerous websites. Doing a cursory web search of the topic today, I discovered this comment from the website of Transit Alliance:
Finally, from the Library of Congress website article “National Funding of Road Infrastructure: Canada” under National Road Infrastructure Funding, Federal Funding
I won’t reproduce the entire text, which can be accessed (along with the references for the “[4]” and “[5]” in the paragraphs above here). It does, however, discuss the importance of both the federal and provincial governments in providing funding for road works to municipalities. One also has to smile at the following quotation, taking from the Introduction:
As Steve has pointed out on numerous occasions, the relative [im]practicality of these realities in the current discussion of transit system building and maintenance in the broader context of providing transit funding to allow fair fares to users of public transit systems and encourage usage seems to be moot.
Politicians will continue to promise a chicken in every pot (without having to pay for either the chicken or the pot), but until the public at large stop trying to cheap out so that “their” taxes don’t go up to fund that transit that “they” never use or refuse the constant scapegoating of government “waste and inefficiency” as a political mantra and an excuse not to spend money where the overall benefit to the whole population would be positive, transit systems won’t even be able to resolve the issues of fares and what might even be appropriate.
And everyone will suffer as a result.
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Point of order
You can keep your Presto card unregistered, and risk having to right off your balance if you lose your card. But, if I am not mistaken, you can register your card, in which case you can reclaim your balance, when you report your card was lost, stolen or broken.
But then, if I lose my debit card, my bank lets me reclaim that balance, as well.
If your card is registered, and tied to an app on your phone, technically Presto could sell your travel pattern to telemarketers.
Steve: Technology already exists to link passing pedestrians to the content of video billboards based on known behaviour/browsing patterns.
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After unwittingly instigating your rant and the discussion following, I’ll dip my toes back in for a couple of comments:
On the topic of flat fares: you focus on the added cost for riders with long commutes, but miss out on all of the short trips that aren’t taken because the flat fare exceeds the perceived benefit. In the last three days I have personally forgone six one-way TTC trips that would have been pure profit for the TTC – they were all off-peak in one form or another – because I’m not willing to pay $2.80 to go a few kilometres. For one round trip I walked, for one I cycled and for the other I will drive on the weekend. If the fare actually reflected the cost of service or my benefit I would have made different choices and the TTC’s cost recovery would be that much better. If flat fares keep rising, more and profitable rides will simply disappear and the TTC will be left with the all of the money-losing trips.
Steve: My point is not to dismiss the benefit of shorter fares (although someone taking that many trips probably should have a pass of some flavour), but to point out that nobody is asking the affected riders if they want to pay more to use the TTC for long trips. A bunch of short trips has a value, but much moreso to people who live in the well-served central part of the network where the distance between destinations is probably short. Waiting for a bus in Scarborough is not the same thing as waiting for a train at Bloor Street.
On the topic of free transit: this can work in a region with no growth or sprawl, but wouldn’t work well in the GTA as riders (and developers) would quickly learn to take advantage of the inherent subsidy. As housing costs are high in the central core, most people make a trade-off between cost of housing and cost/length of commute. If all transit was free you would see much more demand for sprawling development at the fringes of the region as the cost of commuting would be dumped on the tax base. Even with a flat fare you see this to some extent as the extra cost of providing service to far-flung areas of the inner suburbs doesn’t cost the rider more but does hurt the TTC’s cost recovery. You also see this when it comes to capital spending, as everyone wants improved service (e.g., GO extensions, new subway lines, more buses) without having to pay for it. In contrast, with some form of fare by distance there is a natural reduction in property prices as you get further away from the core to account for the increased cost of commuting, and if there are transit improvements they can be better covered by fare revenue. People look at the supposed unfairness of fare distance or better cost recovery but they don’t look at the flip side, which is unfairness in the allocation of transit subsidies.
On the topic of fare by mode: I get the argument that the TTC is built around a subway backbone with bus feeders and I’m personally not a huge fan of charging a separate fare just for transferring. My understanding is that fare by mode is really just a crude way to reflect distance traveled and the fact that some modes have higher unit costs. That being said, my own personal situation can serve as an illustration as to the benefit of fare by mode. I live one bus stop away from a subway station and travel mainly during peak periods. If I ride that bus I am contributing to peak ridership, and ultimately the need to buy more buses and run more service just to serve that one-stop peak ridership. I could walk to the subway but have no reason to do so under a flat fare regime. In contrast, if there was a nominal charge to get on the bus (even 50 cents) I would just walk to the subway station. There are probably thousands of people in Toronto who live one or two stops away from a subway, LRT or GO station and would choose to walk if it meant saving a little bit on their commuting costs.
Steve: It is easy to construct sample journeys where a separate fare is avoided with a short walking or cycling journey, but we don’t build networks around that sort of thing.
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My present commute takes me from approximately Long Branch to approximately Fairview Mall. I take the TTC. While I don’t represent the majority of people, I’m certain there are many others who, like I, endure a painfully long commute in the interest of saving money. This is the only reason I have not bought a car. I could afford to do so, but am presently choosing not to. The day the TTC introduces fare-by-distance, I’m done using it. Assuming 5% of the commuting public is in a similar position, I can’t imagine the impacts to traffic on roads that are already well beyond capacity. Whether this fare system is equitable financially or not to those in need, the broader impacts to the city as a whole in terms of both road and transit capacity from the habits of those presently using transit must be considered. Yes, it works elsewhere in the rest of the world. However at the present (and likely the future) rate of building infrastructure in this city, and with the limited availability of land for road and transit projects, we could not adapt anywhere close to fast enough to deal with the resulting change.
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There is much discussion about “fair” fares, and that will probably create endless distractions, because most of us are decent people. However I feel a fare system that works, is effective, quick, predictable and cheap is the best way to run a transit system.
Zone-based fares are a big problem, because there is no perfect way to draw boundaries. Many, many years ago I was using TTC buses to get to my summer job. I lived on Don Mills, and my job was at Bathurst & Lawrence. The direct way would cost me 3 fares each way (Zone 2 to Zone 1 to Zone 2), so I went north to Ellesmere, west to Bathurst, and south to Lawrence – all in zone 2. I spent more time and less money. TTC saved nothing and earned less money.
You can charge fare by distance if you have a realistic way of measuring distances traveled. Remember that buses handle a large proportion of trips, and there are no turnstiles or card readers at most surface stops. Any tap-on tap-off system would need equipment on the vehicles. Currently the all-door loading and unloading method saves considerable time. If we slow up the loading and unloading process to have an accurate record of each trip, there will be added costs, and added time.
The incremental costs of each added passenger are miniscule to the system. Unlike aviation, there are no reserved seats, so adding a passenger does not have an opportunity cost of a displaced rider. Unlike taxis, the vehicle drives the same route regardless of the passengers on board, so there is no extra cost when you board a vehicle. The cost of the added fuel or electricity to carry an extra 100 kg is the only true incremental cost.
So flat fare, fare by zone, or fare by time just change the relative cost to the users. Most of the system costs are fixed costs. What the system needs is predictable funding to support the costs of running a huge interconnected network. Having passengers commit to a flat monthly fare probably works best. Once you make that commitment, you make the TTC your preferred method of transport, and you build your schedule accordingly. And if you know your monthly cost, you do not worry about the accuracy of the charge for each ride.
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I see your first point but I disagree with your parenthetical. The subway only covers certain portions of the Toronto grid … I don’t see a Queen subway or Sheppard West subway coming an time soon. The aim of fare by mode is essentially to have the highest capacity mode subsidize a lower capacity one. So to answer one of Steve’s earlier questions, yes I would consider the new Eglinton line a premium/subway fare.
The benefits versus zone systems are:
(1) avoiding zone boundaries within a route — so If I live at Islington and Steeles, and work at Islington and Bloor, or live at Lawrence and Weston and work at the Airport I pay one fare/token. You might be able to achieve this by charging for transfers instead of making RT a premium fare (e.g. Philadelphia) however, the nature of Toronto’s grid road network would mean that most people would wind up needing one as part of their trip and that wouldn’t really be but more of a true ‘raising in the cost of operations’ as you call it.
(2) it does not target only long distance trips, i.e. suburb-core. I’d argue that preserving affordable bus fares for trips that don’t involve the subway, which occur both downtown and in the suburbs, is just as much transit equity as building new lines, considering how much life goes on away from the subway.
A thorn in the side of fare by mode: what to do about running surface routes over existing subway lines? Restoring surface routes to these lines while costly, has the side benefit of making the TTC more accessible.
All this is predicated however on the portion of TTC users who regularly include the subway as part of travel, which I don’t actually know…
Steve: There is a diagram in an overview presentation given to the new TTC Board in December 2014, and the breakdown you want is in a chart on page 9.
Breaking down passengers by the first vehicle they board, 51.5% get on a bus and 10.6% begin on a streetcar. Of all passengers, 25.8% ride bus and subway, and 9% ride streetcar and subway. More riders stay exclusively on surface routes than ride only on the subway.
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You don’t have to look further than York Region for an example of this. French Immersion schools have classes from 8 am to 2:30 pm while the all-English schools are from 9 am to 3:30 pm in order to have the same fleet of buses serve one after the other.
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I know it’s another can of worms, but the high trip multiple for the Metropass means that I’m right on the bubble. If you want you can scale the fare by distance such that suburban riders aren’t unduly punished for the spread out nature of their area, but I suspect you’d find that people in Scarborough are now doing exactly the same thing that I am – they are walking long distances or driving for short trips. It’s just that the trips are longer, on average, but still shorter than a commute downtown.
Personally I would be happy if we copied the London model and used a flat fare for surface transit, fare by distance for the subway/LRT and also sold multi-zone monthly passes where each zone has a small premium over the base level. Obviously the benefit of the flat fare for buses will be capped by the fact that you usually need to ride the subway to travel long distances, but that seems reasonable to me. I’m not suggesting that someone pay double or triple fares, more like $100 for a zone 1 Metropass, $125 for zone 2, $150 for zone 3, etc. I would rather err on the side of more zones with small price increases for each zone so that there’s no reason for someone to make a detour just to stay in their zone.
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Please forgive my apparent insensitivity regarding those unable to set aside sufficient funds to buy a MetroPass or to fund a Presto Card. I agree that these are real and ongoing problems. I know that there are those in our society who walk many kilometres a day just to obtain the bare necessities because they cannot afford a single token or $3 cash fare, let alone fund a bulk purchase. As a socialist, I support funding for these individuals so they can participate in the mainstream of our society.
My comment was only supposed to apply to the complaining middle class and the assertion that many downtown trips were unfairly overpriced. Those people have the solution of a MetroPass.
I remember, as a child, when the zone system was abolished. We were pretty happy. I agree with your analysis that changing that expectation would lead cause a pretty hostile reception in the burbs.
Steve: This comment has been re-edited to remove the erroneous attribution of the first paragraph to me. It is Michael Greason’s.
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One does not have to be a professional Accountant (which I am) to realize that the cost of the roads is very far from the entire cost of the subsidy to car drivers. We can also add the cost of police, fire and ambulance service, paid out of general taxation.
Or the costs of car-dependent urban sprawl. Here is a link to a handy chart from the City of Halifax showing the costs of car-dependent urban sprawl. The annual cost to the City of Halifax is $3,462 per suburban household vs. $1,416 per urban. Over twice as much!
In the City of Toronto alone, health-care costs due to people being poisoned by car pollution were estimated by our Medical Officer of Health at $2.2 billion per year. Yes, that’s billion with a “B.”
And let’s not forget the $13.7 billion spent by the Ontario and Canadian governments bailing out GM and Chrysler. Again, that’s billion with a “B.”
My estimate is that each car driver is subsidized by approximately $10,000 per year of taxpayer dollars. Ouch!
I also estimate that there would be a lot less car driving if each car driver were required to pay for their own behaviour, instead of reaching into my pocket and helping themselves to hefty sums of my money.
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Interesting debate going on. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years using transit in various cities in The Netherlands and Australia – as well as the TTC.
Outside of buying paper tickets for the first few years in NL, I’ve only used the local equivalent of PRESTO cards – and all have required a tap on, tap off. I find dwell time arguments for tap off situations pretty unfounded – invariably the issue is with load times due to cash fares or grandfathered tickets or cash fares, not unloading. Most of those issues are solved by in the front, out the back policy for buses, and all door loading for streetcars, with an option for tapping on or off at a reader at the stop to aid boarding times.
For heavy rail a system of gates bi-directional, or flow optimised (think Jarvis middle lane) gates to capture tap on or tap off.
The real benefit of this is that you can offer reduced fares for truly short trips initially, while building the most accurate dataset possible for a potential zone, or demand based system in the future. Plus people get in the habit of tapping on/off and if people don’t tap off the cost is max $2.80 in the TTC zone.
One other benefit to the PRESTO rollout is it also allows for selling a myriad of simple paper passes with chips for hour/day amounts to visitors or occasional users which can be priced at a slight premium compared to the PRESTO card based pricing.
Steve: I agree with what you’re saying, but there is a fundamental difference here. We appear to be being shepherded toward distance-based fares by stealth, and may even use Presto to “justify” them. Other cities that use FBD have, in many cases, been doing so for a long time and it is an established part of the fare structure together with the operating practices and passenger flows to support it.
Meanwhile, the TTC, who can’t find two nickels to rub together any time someone talks about finishing the subway accessibility project, has managed to find $38m to buy new turnstiles, a change that was never proposed earlier in the Presto migration.
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I get what you are defending – though what I’d envision is zone 1 & 2 encompassing the 416, with zone 1 representing the equivalent of the old city of Toronto (or thereabouts). Inside those zones a fare of $2.80 maximum would apply – but short hops entirely within zone 1 or zone 2 would be discounted to say $2. This is in line with my experience within other systems, and would not be adding any cost to current ridership.
Obviously, I am in favour of demand and fare by distance, but realise that politically it’s not palatable initially, but for the long term it makes sense, especially when integrating PRESTO across the region – and we already have a zone boundary at the city limits.
You can probably guess that I’m in favour of amalgamating transit agencies as I’ve seen the benefits of removing the individual municipalities from transit management elsewhere. Ideally we’ll have some finding leadership flow from the upcoming federal election, as I find the adherence to the status quo frustrating with regard to transit, and the TTC is one of the worst offenders in my books.
Steve: Your proposal for two zones is not unlike the situation that existed in Toronto before Zone 2 was abolished with the old City of Toronto being much of Zone 1. Politically giving people “downtown” a lower fare just isn’t going to wash. Moreover, it is “fare by distance” only for radial trips — it would still be possible to make a long trip across the top of zone 2 — and a line like Eglinton Crosstown would span two boundaries. Using the old zone system as a model, these would be at Don Mills and Caledonia Stations. Every fare structure has its own built-in biases toward and against certain types of trips, and inventing a new one is a political minefield. Meanwhile, we live in a region that isn’t willing to spend a dime on transit unless it’s part of some megaproject. Even Toronto is only starting to realize that four years of flatlined subsidy is no way to build a transit system, and it has a long, long way to go.
Yes, some political leadership would be a welcome change, but that “leadership” seems far more bent on exploiting issues like suburban vs downtown animosity.
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However, police, fire and ambulance services use roads in order to do their job; even when they are serving people who do not drive cars.
I don’t think this is physically possible. At least 70% of taxpayers are car drivers, and the average taxpayer pays less than $10,000 per year in taxes. If all governments spent $ 10,000 in services for car drivers, they would have no money left to deliver any other government services.
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Fair or not, flat fare within 416 is not going to end in the near future. Such a change seems to be too difficult both technically and politically.
It is more useful to look at ways to mitigate some of the drawbacks of the existing system, hopefully without raising the general fares.
One issue is the relatively high cost of short trips. To address it, I would consider a time-based multiple-trip discount that applies off-peak. For example, one can board 2-nd time for 50 cents if it is within 2 h from the first boarding, or for 1 dollar if it is more than 2 h but within 3 h from the first boarding. Presto can support relatively complex fare rules.
The idea is that more people will take on-and-off trips, and that will bring in additional revenue to offset the reduced fare on some of the existing trips.
Another well-known problem is the cross-boundary double fare. Again, a discounted fare for short trips across the Toronto’s border might bring in more riders and offset the losses from the reduced fare.
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I will accept distance based fares only if Downtown Relief Line is funded by distance based taxes (i.e. by people living within 5 kilometres of a DRL station).
Steve: Maybe we should apply the same criterion to funding the Scarborough Subway. As the westernmost alignment proposed is along the SRT right-of-way, everyone west of the DVP should demand a refund.
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It can fairly easily be proven false.
Just looking at the government of Canada, budget revenues for fiscal year 2014-15 are projected at $279.3 billion.
Canada’s total population over age 20 is 27,693,000 many of whom are not taxpayers.
There’s over $10K per right there. Note that provinces and municipalities also are in the habit of taxing Canadians.
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I agree with you 100% as long as everyone not within 5 km of a streetcar stop gets refund for the billions of dollars spent on the new streetcars and related infrastructure which after nearly a decade has produced only 4 or so new functioning streetcars (not counting the one already in repair after barely being in service) and no sign of the new streetcar barn opening.
Steve: Actually there are 6 in service, not including the one involved in the accident. Leslie Barns will open in the next few months.
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Joe: I will accept distance based fares only if Downtown Relief Line is funded by distance based taxes (i.e. by people living within 5 kilometres of a DRL station).
Steve: Maybe we should apply the same criterion to funding the Scarborough Subway. As the westernmost alignment proposed is along the SRT right-of-way, everyone west of the DVP should demand a refund.
Also refund for what? For something that has not even been built yet? Let’s build the Scarborough subway and then you can apply for refund.
Steve: It shows just how much you know about how that subway is to be financed. The tax has been collected already for two years running. You might think of this as saving for a down payment when work actually starts. Also, btw, some engineering work is already underway.
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Any new fare structure is needed to address integration of the RER & TTC networks. We currently have a flat-fare TTC network and a zone-based GO network (with multiple zones within the 416). With RER, these fare systems should be harmonized: either modify the GO fare zones so that the 416 is a single fare zone or have zone-based fares within the 416/TTC network (and adopt the same zones for GO/RER). My preference is for the former because I fear that the urban/suburban political divide will widen if we add multiple zones within the 416/TTC network. However, this will require a larger operating subsidy (and who will pay?).
The current fare structure causes more people to take the TTC for long trips instead of taking the GO. For example, my current commute (within the 416) costs $7.84 each way using GO & TTC, or $2.80 each way using only TTC. This current system encourages people to take the TTC (putting pressure on the system), and it encourages us to build more subways to the suburbs. I would like to see a common fare system for GO/RER and TTC, and this would need a higher subsidy that will have to come from a combination of taxes and fare increases.
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I think that Mike was just ranting as the title of this thread is “A Little Rant …”.
I agree with you 100% Pete.
How many transit agencies in Peel? At least two – namely: MiWay, Brampton Transit
How many transit agencies in Halton? At least three namely: Burlington Transit, Milton Transit, Oakville Transit. Plus some of them use Presto, some of them don’t.
I couldn’t agree more.
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Fund a MetroPass, yes – but a Presto Card?!?
Presto only requires a minimum of $10 to be loaded, though I do wonder why something smaller (a single fare amount?) is not allowed. It’s not like their system cannot handle smaller amounts. On one occasion, my Presto balance went $1.07 negative since an online load hadn’t reached the terminals before I needed to take a trip. The system allows one fare into the red, but locks the card from further use until one pays the negative amount plus a 25 cent service charge at an in-person terminal. A pending load cannot pay this as it cannot get to the card while it is locked. Paying $1.32, with $1.07 of it being a load to the card was certainly possible.
Getting back to the “affordability” of adding $10 to a Presto card, outside of the TTC, pretty much all the local GTHA transit agencies give you the choice between paying the cash fare for one trip, or purchasing 10 – yes TEN – tickets (there may be the odd one that sells them in fives). In York Region, this means shelling out either $4 for the cash fare or $34 to purchase ten tickets.
Only having to cough up $10 at a time is a blessing, but I suppose Toronto-dwellers who are used to being able to purchase three tokens at a time for $8.40 must find $10 at once an extreme hardship.
Steve: The issue is for a large number of people for whom banking services are a tenuous arrangement, and for families where several Presto cards might “auto-reload” from an account unexpectedly.
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I wonder if Joe believes in buffet restaurants implementing weight-based prices? Are these two not on a similar note?
The buffet restaurant comparison is relevant here because this follows from the “I don’t want MY taxes paying for XXXXX” thinking that is very common. Government services are not a pick-and-choose menu, but more like a buffet. One pays their fee and chooses to use the services they need and not choose those they don’t need or don’t want. To quote John Oliver, “You don’t get to show up and say ‘I know it costs ten-ninety-nine, but I’m only paying seven-fifty because I have a moral objection to beets.'”
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I’m ambivalent about FBD vs. flat fare. I see it mainly as an additional tool in land use planning. By imposing an additional cost for long distance travel, you can force a city to plan for more affordable housing in the core. Rich people can no longer dump poor people in remote suburbs and force them to take a two hour bus into work because poor people’s time isn’t valuable. With FBD, the economics won’t work out, so employers will have to pay their workers more or the city will actually have to find a way to let poor people live in the city. Is FBD the best way to do that? Who knows?
I’m mainly posting though because you seem to have some errors in your post. The 905 uses a distance-based system. Just look at the York Region Transit web page to see their zone-based system (or just drop by Downsview and look at the YRT fare machines). Also, 905 fares are higher than TTC fares because their ridership is lower and the cost of providing transit is higher. Perhaps in the 70s, the suburbs did complain about subsidizing downtown fares. In any fare integration between 416 and 905, the TTC would be subsidizing the 905, not the other way around. I doubt the TTC would go with FBD on buses any time soon, but if they did, I suspect they would design a system that required a tap-on only. Basically, all buses would stay entirely within a zone but travel from the edge of the zone to the other edge (similar to how buses now generally always terminate at a subway line). There might be express buses that travel between zones, but you would pay for multiple zones with the single tap-on.
Steve: Yes, I know York Region has two fare zones, but it is the exception, not the rule in the 905. You may be interested to know that York residents do NOT want to pay a YRT/VIVA/GO fare plus a subway fare to get to downtown Toronto, or even as far into the city as York U.
There are no doubt many ways to implement FBD and deal with the operational and subsidy issues, but we seem to be sliding into an implementation before we have even had a debate on the parameters. The TTC’s proposal to buy turnstiles capable of “tap out” is a net addition to their capital budget at a time they claim to have no money to spare.
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Oh, on a related yet unrelated note. I dropped by the St. Clair West streetcar station on the weekend, and they have lots of big signs up saying that the St. Clair streetcar now gives out time-based transfers! I assume that this must be some sort of TTC experiment or something. If you’re poor and you need to go on a shopping trip of more than two stops, it might actually make sense to stop by the St. Clair streetcar line first and pay a fare there to get a time-based transfer in order to save money. It might skew their experiment results though. I know in the past, I’ve been in situations where I needed to buy a bunch of stuff, and I could save $2 by going to WalMart, $1 at the Dollar Store, a few more dollars over at Home Depot, etc., but I couldn’t justify paying multiple fares (or the day pass) to go to all of them, so I was stuck paying more to buy the stuff locally. But this St. Clair time-based fare might make the economics work. So there’s some interesting stuff cooking at the TTC regarding fares whether it’s FBD or a time-based system (note: Presto is required for a time-based system because the current design of the subway means that paper transfers won’t work–people would just keep going back to the subway to get a new transfer for more time–I know I would).
Steve: There have been time-based fares on St. Clair since the reconstruction of the line.
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This is a common misconception that Republicans like espousing in the US. In Canada, everyone pays the GST, so everyone pays taxes. Everyone, no matter how poor, pays taxes to the government.
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This is a significant issue for low-income families and others. Everyone and their uncle want access to your bank account. Considering the fraud problem the initial contractor chosen by Metrolinx had, I refused to setup auto-load. It’s been resolved but it left a bad taste.
I am lucky now that I live in walking distance of an OC Transpo service centre. I can simply drop by and add cash to my Presto card. So I have the added benefit that I don’t have the 24 hour wait as it’s my card which updates the reader.
But I don’t see Presto as convenient, I only do this because Presto fares are cheaper than paper tickets. Which I could buy from the corner store which is right around the corner. What a mess.
I do not know what I will do if we ever are forced to use our debit cards. It’s too easy to scan and of course easy to lose. Pick-pockets would have a field day in stealing it.
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This only works if all your stores are on the 512 line. The transfer gives you up to two hours ‘hop on, hop off’ on the 512, but as soon as you board another line (bus or subway) it becomes a standard ‘one uninterrupted trip’ transfer.
This is explained on TTC’s Time-based Transfers page.
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I generally agree that an actual needs-based approach is superior for most groups. However it will fail most students in practice, so student status is an excellent proxy for need. Depending upon needs assessment through the loan, tax and benefit system fails students because that system is poorly conceived, terribly executed, and getting worse. Only for students do we count income and illiquid assets of relatives they don’t live with, and count debt as income. That system is now geared to move risk from the general population onto vulnerable students, not the other way around.
Steve: The political context at the time student fares were extended to post-secondary adult students is that there were also calls for lower fares for the poor. These fell on deaf ears, or rather on people whose attitude was “this is a social service, let someone else pay”.
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I believe that in 2018 the express buses in Ottawa will simply be routed onto MacDonald Parkway in the west, and the just-opened 417 HOV lanes in the east. The first phase of the LRT opening in 2018 does not reach far enough east and west to be of much advantage to trans-greenbelt commuters heading to downtown.
The NCC and City of Ottawa have concluded an agreement to move all buses off the MacDonald Parkway, but only once the western LRT extension (phase 2) is built, maybe in 2023. Then OCTranspo will have to either dump those express users at Baseline and Bayshore (both poor choices for termini), or route their buses onto the Queensway before HOV lanes appear there circa 2025. Only in the east, where phase 2 also extends the LRT across the greenbelt to Orleans, are express buses likely to become extinct. Even then, Orleans may retain express buses along the yet-to-be-built south Orleans BRT route.
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A lot of things may change between now and the actual opening of the LRT system; however the Mayor and OC Transpo already announced that express routes will be cancelled on the opening of the phase 1 LRT. That’s an important part of the plan.
If that’s the plan, then perhaps we need to discuss what is going to be the transit plan and the fare plan before 2018. But I suspect that shortly before opening day we will learn about the new fare chart with no discussion.
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I am all in favour of reducing externalities for car drivers. Your arguments frustrate that effort because they are so superficial and obviously one-sided. You’ve entirely ignored the other side of the ledger. Toting up the extra costs municipalities spend on lower-density developments is the easy work, but not exhaustive.
Urban sprawl has its own costs indirect of cars, but much of this is recovered through higher property taxes in suburban municipalities. There is a fairness question there, but regardless it cannot simply be ignored.
Steve: Careful — the municipality that gains the “higher property taxes” may not be the one that must undertake capacity expansions in the road network. Also, those higher suburban taxes are a comparatively recent phenomenon once the cost of rebuilding the first generation of infrastructure paid for with development charges (a one time tax) finally catch up to municipalities that crowed about their great financial stewardship.
The driving factor in any accounting of the automobile in North America is the almost 1% boost in productivity that car dependent suburbs brought post WWII over urban areas. Compounded for 70 years, that wealth is enormous and its benefits (while often private) have been spread over both urban and suburban dwellers. While this doesn’t address inequities in current flows between different transport mode users, it dwarfs any subsidy that car owners receive in the aggregate. One of our great challenges in the 21st century is to retain the productivity and labour gains that suburbs brought as they age out and urbanize.
The value of labour mobility alone brought about by the car dwarfs the hyperinflated figures toted by various Medical Officers of Health, who lean on Health Canada’s much-flawed AQBAT – which similarly ignores all health benefits. Automobile exhaust does contribute to premature death, shortening the life of 1 in 500 urbanites an average of 3 months, yet overall contributed to increasing the longevity of the entire population by years. Will we hear both from the Medical Officer of Heath? No. Until we do, they are lobbyists, not scientists. Note that that report lobbies against car use, not just car emissions.
Ming is right – everyone in Canada has to pay taxes and this hurts no one more than our fellow homeless people whom I have seen turned away by ruthless cashiers for being as little as 5 cents short. Also a lot of homeless people have frozen to death at bus and streetcar stops because of heartless drivers who would not let them on just because they have no fare. Since our government continues to tax the homeless and TTC won’t let them on without a fare that they often don’t have, I encourage all of you to help the homeless especially those who are severely mentally ill.
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In Canada, a growing proportion of the population is GST/HST exempt, namely First Nations people living on reserves. Also, the poor have GST/HST rebates, sometimes in excess of tax paid.
Canada has a *more* distributive tax and benefit system than the US, such that a greater proportion of the population pays no net tax or receives net benefits. This includes some people who think of themselves as middle class, especially since the early 1990s when middle class income growth began to be dominated by increased public transfers.
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Since there has been talk of fares based on the type of service, Subway versus Surface vehicle, with apologies to Jonathon Swift, I wish to make a modest proposal. How about fares based on the cost of the service provided. Heavy lines like Spadina and King would cost less to ride than lines like Sheppard Subway and the Arrow bus. Please this is just a hypothetical exercise and not presented as my true opinions.
Opinions expressed by me in a moment of insanity are not necessarily those of my sane self.
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Lol.
It seems to me that, the greater extent government bodies subsidize the day to day operations of a transit service, the more justification the politicians making the policy decisions for those government bodies could argue they had to require the transit service to carry out a social policy.
In 1974, when I was just a teenager, I attended most of the public meeting of the Metroplan process. During the very last Q&A of the very last session an angry lady with a cane, asked some long angry questions as to why the TTC wasn’t accessible to the mobility challenged, and when would the TTC offer service for the mobility impaired.
At 18 years old I thought she was crazy. I had never heard of anything like wheeltrans, and the idea the mobility impaired should ever get a transit service for the same ticket as everyone else, when that service would be considerably more expensive than the ordinary service seemed absurd.
The planner leading the Q&A was a lot more patient, foresightful and thoughtful than I was. After briefly saying such services were possible, and would cost more, he tried to answer the second part of her question — when.
He said it would require a change in the political mandate, so he couldn’t predict when, as he was a planner, not a politician.
Really, it is surprising how few years it took for the change in paradigm, and the change in political mandate to happen. The elderly, those with disabilities, still need to travel for medical appointments, to see their social workers. When they can’t afford a cab for those services, and they simply don’t go see their doctors, or social workers, their health care, and other care, ends up costing taxpayer more than the subsidy to the municipalities equivalent to wheeltrans.
Aren’t the operating costs of the TTC receiving a much smaller subsidy per passenger than just about every transit system in North America? That would suggest that all of our three levels of government had less justification for using fare policy as a tool for implementing public policy than those American cities with much higher subsidies.
The TTC recently changed its fare policy, eliminating all fares for those under twelve years old. I didn’t read a justification for this change.
So, what are the changes that would justify giving a subsidy to the TTC to supplement the farebox, so the TTC could afford to use fares to aid in implementing social policies?
Do we want to try and build subsidiary, dense, downtown-like subcentres outside downtown? At the ends of the YUS and BD lines? At the intersection of the Sheppard and DRL lines? If so, how would we use the farebox to encourage the development of these regional centres?
If the Government of Ontario wanted to siphon off some of the population and employment growth that they could otherwise expect in Toronto into Mississauga and other parts of the GTA, what GTA-wide fare manipulations would they want to push that growth?
I don’t know how many here would think either of those are good ideas. Call me Nimby, but, personally, I think downtown is too dense already. But leaving this aside. What other policy alternatives could justify subsidizing the farebox?
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Read the policy again:
You can use that transfer all you want until the expiry time. The only difference when you are not on St. Clair is that it can only be used at a transfer point, not at any intermediate stop.
Depending on what I’m doing when I head downtown, I get off the subway at St. Clair to take the 512 over to St. Clair West and get a time-based transfer. Originally, it was necessary to have gotten a regular transfer, even if at St. Clair or St. Clair West before boarding the 512 and the driver would exchange it for you. For the last year or two, there was no exchange and the operator would just give a time-based transfer.
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Interesting. It’s a slippery slope that fare by mode falls on too. If you do that, there’s no incentive to balance your books and some fares will skyrocket. A flat fare (should) encourage smarter route planning on the part of the company, if their mandate is to provide transit ‘equity’. Plus, when charging by cost, you run the risk of routes being more easily neglected because they don’t bring in enough revenue. Fare by mode should seek to charge based on capacity, not cost to the company to avoid these pitfalls.
It’s like fuel/energy surcharges. Where is the incentive to make your company better if you’re just billing me for your expenses?
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A couple of points:
In a recent article in the Metro which I can’t seem to find online, a spokesperson for the TTC said their costs don’t really change based on how much distance a person travels. I believe they said their costs a based on maintaining and running the while network. With this, I don’t understand how fare-by-distance would be to the TTC’s benefit.
Steve: I don’t know who made that statement, but it does not accord with the fact that the TTC publishes operating costs for its system based on vehicle mileage, operator hours and peak vehicle requirements. Quite clearly the cost of the system is not a fixed amount, and providing “better” service (whatever that might mean) usually costs more money unless it is truly an “efficiency improvement” such as well-regulated spaces between vehicles.
That said, the cost of operating any route is, generally speaking, a function of the peak demand on that route. If someone rides the Lawrence East bus from Rouge Hill to Eglinton Station, they count as “1” person at the peak point just as much as if they rode from, say, McCowan and Lawrence to the Lawrence East RT station.
One could argue that it’s not fair that a person can go from one end of Toronto to the other on a $3 fare; however, the key ‘cost’ to the rider is time and even on the subway it is over an hour.
Steve: Conversely it can be argued that the subway is a “premium” service for which riders should pay more because they use less time to travel anywhere. The problem, of course, is that the network is designed on an integrated basis with the subway providing trunk services and little or no parallel bus operation as an alternative.
There is also the question of setting up the infrastructure of tracking this so would this mean we would have use our Presto cards to get off at a stop? I would think investments might be better placed elsewhere.
Steve: Yes, that is a major issue I have because “tapping off” is central to fare by distance unless it is done on a very coarse basis which would have many of the same problems we see today with municipal fare boundaries. TTC operations and passenger flows are not designed around the inherent delays this would bring.
Ideally, we would study the effect of transit pricing and investment with the greater good: for example, if TTC fares were $2 per ride, would the 401 and DVP see drastic reductions in traffic? Would people in low-wage jobs have more money for other necessities compared to income loss to the overall transit system? If fares were free, would it actually increase riders and improve gridlock? Would it be better to invest public money elsewhere such as subsidizing low-income house and housing co-ops rather than extra low transit fares?
Steve: Actually I don’t think it would make much difference on the 401 at all because the transit system is not organized around the trips that might be displaced. Free fares come up from time to time, and the issue always is (supported by polling) that people want better service, not free transit. “Free” is like a candy store with an empty window.
I find it interesting that public figures and commentators find it easy to suggest distance-based or zone-based transit fares yet if someone asked them about bringing back the Vehicle Registration Fee or parking fees outside of downtown they would likely say it isn’t fair to the hard-working car drivers from working families.
Steve: Just say the words “road tolls” and watch the political explosion.
In terms of helping low income groups with reduced fares, we would need to look at the whole picture to see what would help them and I would love to see an unbiased, non-political Royal Commission on taxes and transfers review the whole picture. There is lots of applause for governments that raise minimum wages; however, little media coverage if they raise the personal income tax exemption, even though the former would hit a lot of small businesses while the latter would hit the governments. In our current tax system, a millionaire buys their groceries tax free while a person only making about $25,000 a year has to pay income tax and likely pay a service about $50-80 to fill out the forms for them. However if a politician ever suggested having a 10% HST on everything and no income tax if you make less than $40,000, the oppositions parties and media would scream, “You want to tax food and shelter!!!”
There is an interesting discussion about how property taxes and development charges encourage sprawl in the book “Perverse Cities’ by Pamela Blais, that basically property taxes don’t match the costs to the municipality in many cities so a person in a downtown condo or apartment might be subsidizing another person in a suburban home. I think some of the principles could also apply to transit fares.
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There are at least six problems with this.
#1. The TTC runs a lot of low-volume “coverage” service. What that means is that transportation has to work for me 100% of the time. For example, suppose the TTC is good for 90% of my trips, but the final 10% is when I have to work on the midnight shift and there is no service to get me to work. So I say “#&^%!@!! TTC” and buy a car.
#2. How do we allocate the overheads? The TTC requires a lot of staff workers and managers to make it run. Which line pays for them?
#3. How do we allocate capital costs? Accounting depreciation? Then, for example, new subways cost more to run than old subways because the old tunnels are fully depreciated. And no, ignorant politicians notwithstanding, the tunnels don’t have a lifespan of only 100 years.
#4. A lot of the service is interdependent. For example, subways are absolutely dependent upon feeder routes. Should subways be allocated a percentage of the costs of their feeder routes?
#5. A lot of resources consumed by the TTC have economic value that does not appear in their Financial Statements. For example, the ROW that the St. Clair car runs in is quite valuable real estate. Is the 512 line going to be charged for the use of this real estate as an operating expense?
#6. Wheel-Trans. Going to make disabled Canadian war veterans pay for the cost of their ride for rehabilitation therapy at Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital? Let me know how that flies politically.
Steve: I look forward to your fare structure for the (eventually) brand new Scarborough Subway. The sound of a cash register clanging should be added to all of the new turnstiles.
BTW … Robert was only joking for the sake of it, but there are people who do think along these lines, our wonderful Deputy DMW among them.
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@Giancarlo and Kevin Love;
What part of
does not come across as tongue in cheek? What do I have to do NOT to be taken seriously?
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