On November 21, the TTC Board approved the fare increase proposed by staff in their Operation Budget for 2017. Adult and Senior/Student token/ticket fares will rise by ten cents to $3.00 and $2.05 respectively. Metropasses for both fare classes will rise by $4.75 with the result that the “multiple” (the ratio between the pass price and the single token/ticket) for seniors/students drops slightly (by about 0.5) while for adults it is unchanged. Here is the full table of old and new fares.
There was a long parade of deputants at the meeting who, despite a motion by Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong to limit presentations to three minutes, mostly managed to push the envelope out to the normal five minutes simply by taking a rather long time to “wrap up” when Chair Josh Colle gave the three minute warning. Their comments overwhelmingly spoke to the effect of a fare increase, but also to the question of service quality. Despite the TTC’s claims that they are not limiting service growth and causing crowding, actual experience does not match these claims, a point echoed by Councillors who sit on the TTC Board and who receive many complaints about this from their constituents.
To soften the blow, the TTC Board voted to direct staff to prepare the 2018 budget on the basis of no fare increase so that, in effect, over a two year period fares would only have gone up five cents per year. This is a Catch-22 decision going into an election year because somehow Council will have to find the money to pay for the idea just when tax increases are regarded as political suicide, but service cuts would be equally unpalatable.
The most contentious part of the debate turned on Appendix C to the report which described various options for higher fares and lower service. Included on the list was the cost of free passes for the Blind and War Amps ($2.1 million), and even considering this shows a breathtaking insensitivity.
This was described by CEO Andy Byford as the “Armageddon Appendix” in an interview with CBC’s Metro Morning, an presents a menu of extremely unpleasant options to close the remaining gap between TTC’s planned revenue, including the fare increase, and projected costs. This amount has three components totaling $99 million:
- A $35.1 million shortfall in the “conventional” system’s operating budget.
- A $26.4 million shortfall in the WheelTrans operating budget.
- A proposed transfer of $37.5 million from the TTC’s operating budget to the City’s capital budget. This scheme has not been endorsed by the City Manager, and is simply an accounting trick to bump the TTC subsidy without showing it as part of the annual increase. Either way, it would mean increased City spending whether as “operating expense” or “capital from current”.
Byford was at pains to emphasize that he would not recommend any of the changes, but produced the list because he was asked for it. What is missing, of course, is a sense of the effect of any of the changes at the individual level: how many riders benefit from which discounts, which services would be affected by changes to standards? It is easy for the budget hawks on Council to talk about “efficiencies” when they are single-line descriptions, a dollar amount, but with no specifics about what would happen.
For their part, members of the TTC Board seemed unable to grasp the difference between sending an unbalanced budget to Council without recommendations on how to fix it, as opposed to taking a strong stand saying “we oppose these cuts”. This evolved as the meeting wore on with some recognition of the need to take a stand, but this did not find its way into the final motions (see below).
The Board may have punted the issue over to Council, but nothing prevents Council from saying “TTC, you are only getting this much subsidy, you figure out how to deal with it”. Even a desire to save service improvements implemented at Mayor Tory’s behest will require someone to decide either on new revenues to fund transit, or on which of these improvements will die on the altar of “efficiency” and “saving taxpayer dollars”.
It is important to remember the U-turn candidate John Tory made when he discovered just how badly the Ford administration had gutted the TTC. From Tory’s speech of January 19, 2015:
Building a great future starts with ensuring our ability to move around.
We will be recommending that the TTC commission and ultimately city council approve significant new funding for transit.
…
Today, Chair Colle and I are announcing a $95 million investment in the TTC that is both long overdue and absolutely necessary for the social and economic well-being of our city.
It will see:
- the restoration of many bus and streetcar routes that were cut in 2011
- reintroducing all-day, every-day service on bus and streetcar routes, matching them with the hours enjoyed by our subway riders
- reduced waiting and crowding during off-peak times
- reduced waiting and crowding on 21 of the TTC’s key routes in peak times
- a series of new express bus routes
- adding two additional subway trains on lines 1 and 2 during the morning and afternoon rush
- expansion of the blue night network, so people coming home late or getting to work at 5 am have more options to get around, and
- proof-of-payment on all streetcar routes that will speed up service and travel times for the more than 65 million annual riders who use the TTC’s extensive streetcar network
This investment also includes 50 new buses and a temporary storage facility that will allow us to deliver these extra services in rush hour in the coming months.
…
During the election campaign I committed, along with all of the other candidates, not to raise transit fares in 2015.
It was not until the transition period after the election that I was fully able to comprehend the scope and extent of the transit cutbacks imposed by the previous administration. Deliberate decisions were made under my predecessor to reduce service and increase crowding.
So when the people of Toronto sensed service was much worse, they were right.
But not only was service impacted. These cutbacks disproportionally hit those who needed transit service the most, particularly those living the suburbs.
Transit connects people to jobs. It provides a means of getting around for people who can’t afford a car.
To put it bluntly, we have starved our transit system to the breaking point.
Almost two years ago, Mayor Tory understood that transit needed substantially better funding, but by mid-2016, his outlook was that every city agency should find a 2.6% saving in their budget, not ask for an increase. (In the case of the TTC which raises most of its costs from the farebox, this saving only applies to the City’s operating subsidy.)
If the TTC were forced to absorb the entire $99 million shortfall in its 2017 budget, this would completely undo the $95 million increase. In effect, Tory would pull out his “investment” in transit to limit the pressure on property taxes. (To put this in context, a 1% property tax hike brings in about $30m annually.)
Despite the oft-repeated claim that $95 million has been added to the TTC’s budget, the actual increase over recent years is much lower (source: TTC 2017 Operating Budget report, p. 11)
The effect of the Ford years (2011-2014) is clear in this table, but there has not been an annual increase of $95m during the Tory era. Although the number is commonly cited, the actual subsidies have gone up by only $55m over Mayor Tory’s two budget cycles. Meanwhile, in current dollar terms, the subsidy per rider is lower than it was at the end of David Miller’s administration.
Notes:
- these figures refer to the “conventional” TTC system and do not include any of the costs associated with WheelTrans, and
- for historical accuracy, these numbers should be restated based on actual ridership and subsidy paid.
For 2017 the overall budget shows where the cost increases and savings are expected.
On the revenue side:
- Although the fares will go up, this is a budget-to-budget comparison, and 2016 included a ridership projection that the system did not achieve. Therefore, the budgeted fare revenue in 2017 actually is less than in 2016.
- This is partly offset by a big jump in commuter parking of $3.0m over the $9.3m received in 2016. A new tariff for parking charges is expected at a TTC Board meeting in the near future.
Within the expenses:
- The CEO’s office includes functions beyond simply the senior administration of the TTC, and for 2017 will have a new group responsible for the “fitness for work” program that has already been approved by the Board. Big increases in the Operations and Service Delivery groups reflect higher base costs plus the full year effect of 2016 service improvements.
- Vehicle fuel costs will drop, but not as much as they might have if the TTC were not subject to the new carbon tax. Traction power costs go up because of rising Hydro rates.
- The depreciation item is dubious and will require a change in the City’s attitude to the funding of this item as discussed above.
- Buried in the Operations Group’s budget is an assumption that the cost of replacing hybrid bus batteries will be shifted to the capital budget.
If the depreciation is added back in to make the figures comparable, the total expenses go from $1.737 billion in 2016 to $1.794b in 2017, an increase of 3.3%. That’s not a bad number considering the combined effect of inflation and net new costs (e.g. Presto, Spadina subway startup), but because revenues are down (relative to budget), the percentage increase in subsidy requirement is much higher at 13.4% if the depreciation figure is included.
Budget-to-budget comparisons can be misleading because any erroneous assumptions of the previous year show up as a surplus or shortfall even though these may have been corrected on an actual results basis through the year. TTC management would do well to produce comparisons with “probable actual” 2016 results to show the efforts made through the year to work within changing circumstances.
This problem will not go away in 2018, an election year. Among the budget pressures facing the TTC will be:
- Annual labour cost increases under the Collective Bargaining Agreement
- Inflation in the cost of utilities and material/supplies
- Full year operation of the Spadina subway extension ($23 million over the part year 2017 costs)
- Foregone revenue from any fare increase in 2018 (about $30 million)
- Full year cost of Presto fees that will only be partly offset by reduced costs from handling discontinued legacy fare media
- Operating costs for the service improvements implied by growth in the bus fleet (*)
(*) In separate reports on the Capital Budget and the Federal Government’s Public Transit Infrastructure Fund (PTIF), the TTC proposes a very large purchase of buses, and trumpets this not simply as replacements for the existing fleet, but for the ability to provide more service to riders. More service means more operating dollars and, inevitably, more subsidy. There is a direct contradiction between the TTC’s capital plans and spending constraints from Mayor Tory and his Council allies for day-to-day operations. I will deal with the Capital Budget and PTIF in a separate article.
The management recommendations were adopted with various amendments:
- No fare increase for 2018.
- Staff are to report on:
- clarification of the various loyalty programs such as VIP pass pricing and the Monthly Discount Plan, and how these might be “harmonized”,
- loading standards and their evolution since 1998 together with recommendations to ease crowding and build ridership in 1Q17,
- fare increases for the past 20 years by category with a comparison against the consumer price index (CPI) (briefing note by the end of 2016), and
- a breakdown of the hours of service per month by mode for the past two years (for the next Board meeting) to show how the actual amount of service provided on the street has changed.
- In the event the City does not accept the transfer of costs from the operating to the capital budget, TTC management would work with the City Manager on a five-year transition plan for these costs with a report to follow by mid 2017.
- A technical amendment directs and authorizes TTC staff to work with and provide information to City staff in their budget preparation.
- The TTC Budget Committee will begin meeting in June 2017 to review the 2018 budget in its preliminary stages. This is ironic considering that three committee meetings in 2016 were cancelled. More generally, the TTC Board seems unwilling to devote the time to policy discussions until a decision forces itself on them, but by then time for abstract consideration of options has passed.
Although Board members/councillors Glenn De Baeremaeker and Shelley Carroll talked of amendments to explicitly reject the fare and service options in Appendix C, or to simply remove that Appendix from the report sent to Council, no motion to this effect was placed.
Motions defeated included:
- John Campbell proposed that staff report on a long list of options for restructuring fares, but this was rejected as coming far too late in the process to permit a January 2017 implementation of the new tariff.
- Joe Mihevc sought to defer any fare increase until after the City has set its 2017 budget.
- Joe Mihevc sought to launch a publicity campaign to encourage Queen’s Park to increase transit subsidies, while Vince Crisanti simply wanted to ask that they fund the $61m shortfall. Shelley Carroll noted that such a request would directly contradict Council’s recent agreement to fund all costs for the new LRT lines and SmartTrack stations.
- Vince Crisanti proposed that the VIP program be examined as a model for a low income fare program. VIP is a bulk purchase plan and not entirely appropriate for this function.
- Crisanti also proposed that seniors’ fares be frozen for 2017.
The next step in this process will be the City’s Budget Launch on December 2 followed by detailed discussions leading eventually to a Council vote in mid-February.
See also:
Steve Munro 
Shelley Carroll made a good point on CP24. The elastic will snap if they keep raising fares as less and less people can afford to pay for and use the TTC.
I look forward to see ridership begin to plummet January 1st.
LikeLike
How much of the TTC expenses or lack of revenue is caused by provincial (or federal) legislation? I’m sure that AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) has put requirements on the TTC (and other transit organizations) that add up. Elevators are expensive. So are low-floor vehicles, which also reduce the number of passengers they can carry.
While I agree with the need, however, shouldn’t the province help pay for the day-to-day operation for accessibility. Since the province passed the law, the province should help with the daily operational budget.
(Not going to happen. They made the rules, but we have to pay for them everyday.)
Steve: Toronto is the only city where accessibility gets really expensive thanks to the need to retrofit subways and because, at least during a transitional stage, low floor cars were comparatively more expensive. Giving TO a special subsidy would not fly elsewhere in Ontario, especially when other cities are expected to make do out of the gas tax transfer.
I could, however, argue that accessibility improvements benefit everyone (I encounter far more baby carriages and shopping carts in elevators than wheelchairs and scooters), and many ambulatory people find their travel eased by the accessibility changes made for the less mobile.
Then there is the fundamental issue that accessibility is a human right, and we have to build the cost of providing it into our budgets. It’s a question of priorities.
LikeLike
I was able to register yet again that the City of Vancouver found that there annual subsidy to cars etc. was about $2,700 per year or c. 7 times as much as what their transit was gifted, from Globe of Jan. 10, 1996. Also, from Newman and Kenworthy’s efforts to trace car and road costs “This was one of the hardest data items of all to gather. The trail of road expenditures in most cities is a tortuous path, whereas expenditures on transit tend to appear in a few easily identified publications.” -.(p. 351 Sustainability and Cities) So we still aren’t seeming to ‘get’ the point that in comparison, transit here is astoundingly efficient/good, and the really large freeloader is the private car, about 300,000 of which cross over city boundaries daily. Folks should be riled, and not just the central city where the transit almost makes money. Of note, is that in today’s Metro, p. 10, Cnclr deBaeremaeker is wanting to take Scarborough out of the forced City-making – and please, and don’t slam the door, and please also take your subway and its costs with you, and buy it yourself as a local subway. It’s important that we put a new subway in a smarter place; Steve observed that the TYSSE costs will be about a 1% hike in the sacred property tax.
LikeLike
It’s too bad that there wasn’t a way for the folks from TTCRiders to rally their members and other TTC riders in general (maybe local media with their readers?) to metaphorically “storm” the offices of the councillors who sit on the TTC Board with phone calls, e-mails and twitter tweets telling them that they will not get back into office in 2018 due to their insensitivity, impatience and incompetence with regards to dealing with the “tough transit issues.” And by dealing with the issues, I mean telling the Mayor to get stuffed with his “no tax increases above the rate of inflation” B.S.
TTC riders can’t do much about the Board’s Citizen Members – and they only hold 4 of the 11 votes, anyway. Plus, I would suggest that some councillors, who showed their disdain for the deputants yesterday, probably have about the same amount of “respect” for those Citizen Members, who come in from “outside the system.”
Both Councillors Glenn De Baeremaeker and Denzil Minnan-Wong need to have their smug smiles wiped off their faces for their arrogance with regards to how transit riders were treated yesterday and are treated in general in this city. Unfortunately, their sub-urban/inner-urban constituents (who must all drive cars or hate to have their taxes go up at all) seem to think the world of them in other areas of fiscal or political importance, as they continue to elect them into their council seats time and again.
I will give Andy Byford his due, at least providing a list to the Board, but it would, as you said above, Steve, have been helpful to have it annotated with numbers and dollars and impacts on Mr./Mrs./Ms./Miss Transit Rider. And I take the councillors to task in general: unlike Gary Webster, former TTC Chief General Manager, councillors can’t get fired by the Mayor for talking back or taking him to task for unrealistic demands. Yes, I understand that the Mayor can spitefully exclude those “mouthy ones” from positions of any import (cf. previous Mayor Subways-Subways-Subways (a.k.a. Ford Edsel)) but the Board needs to be the body that is closer to the TTC rider on the ground (or underground!) and convey their needs for proper conveyance to the City Council members at large.
The TTC Board failed in that respect. And those using the TTC will bear the brunt of that failure moving forward into 2017 and beyond.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with Dick completely – I would like to see ridership continue to plummet. In addition, more and more people are also going to skip fares. They increase fares at least once every year and still the TTC never has enough money. That’s stupidity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Try reducing fares for a change and more revenue might just be the outcome. I can’t afford the TTC fares anymore and so it is with great regret that I am forced to cheat the TTC.
@Myself – More people are going to buy cars now, more pollution, more pedestrian deaths and injuries which are already increasing astronomically. When these people buy cars, they will not be returning to the TTC and so all these fare increases I hope will backfire.
Steve: Let’s see: Metropasses are going up by $4.75 a month, so that’s $57 a year, to $1755 (less if you’re on the MDP subscription plus a 15% tax credit, for a net of $1367). I look forward to your reporting on the car you can buy and operate with only that much more in your pocket.
LikeLike
Regarding the costs associated with AODA compliance–wouldn’t those be primarily be reflected in capital expenditures rather than operating costs anyway? (Slight reductions in bus capacity and other marginal adjustments notwithstanding.)
And as our host notes, fundamental human rights issues aside, “accessibility” improvements do tend to make things better for everyone. Speaking as a proud father, I can definitely say I appreciate the new fare gates when I’m juggling a toddler, a laptop bag, and some groceries. (Though I’m unimpressed by the stealth implementation of fare-by-distance hardware without public consultation or acknowledgement.)
Incidentally – and on a totally different topic – I just noticed there’s a “Draw from TTC Stabilization Reserve” of $14.4 million (which is $13.4 million more than 2016’s $1 million drawdown). Am I being silly, or is the genuine hole in the operating budget closer to $75 million, then, rather than the bottom-line $62 million we’ve been talking about? I mean, the Reserve is presumably of finite and not-very-great size, and the $14 million drawdown isn’t justified because of a bunch of weird, one-off operating costs that will be unique to 2017, is it? In other words, the Reserve won’t be able to keep bridging that same gap indefinitely….
Steve: There is an operating cost to AODA because the eligibility warrants for WheelTrans have been increased along with service standards. Ergo more demand because more people are now entitled to it.
As for the reserve, the draw this year will completely deplete this account, and so it won’t be available to prop up next year’s budget. We’re burning the furniture to heat the house.
LikeLike
And speaking of houses, I came across useful/good info about home price inflation, which our shytstem fails to include as inflation, and it can be a ‘soar’ point. As part of the exercise of failing to improve transit (or choosing an inferior option eg. King St. RoW), and calling it transit planning, the Toronto/East York Community Council had an item about a core plan, TE20.18 done last week. A building group, ResCon, in their submission did cite housing affordibility as a Problem,tho avoided some topics like taxing second/speculative ownerships. Salient was this:
While these rising prices do get caught by the City when sold, anyone owning a home in TO has to be considered Rich, and a 10% tax hike would hurt some, but having more listings would help ease this housing crisis a bit, and owners can cash out, easy. So the Councillors still on the TTC shouldn’t be allowed to avoid their transit hat when it comes to budget time, but that presumes that some of them advocate for transit – and the presence of Deputy Mayor Minnan Wong is about as carservative as they come, and it is a taint.
LikeLike
As I said earlier Steve, eventually something has got to give. You cannot keep raising fares and expect ridership to increase. No matter how you justify it if people cannot afford to pay to use it, nobody will ride it.
Unless you make the service easier to use eventually the elastic will break and nobody will see the value for what is provided. If fares go up (especially with potential construction at Davisville) and surface routes keep suffering from chronic shortages riders will see that and start asking if it is easier to get a car.
I personally do not have my G2 yet but am seriously considering it because the TTC is becoming more and more unaffordable.
Honestly Steve there are a few simple ways to solve the budget hole:
-Eliminate free child fares
-DECREASE fares (doing so would encourage ridership)
-Keep service at the same or better levels.
-Ignore TTC riders demands.
I say ignore TTC riders demands because while they are good ideas, there are not practical. Creating a discounted fare medium for certain groups is not going to end well when you already have a budget deficit. I am not saying do not do it but for now we need to focus on riders as a whole until we can bring the system back to a surplus. We cannot afford to lose more money by discounting fares yet again (the first time by eliminating child fare). If we keep discounting fares to an insanely low level as suggested by TTCriders it will do more harm than good.
Lower the cost of a pass to the 2005 levels and bring cash fare back to $2.25. That will increase ridership, not discount fares for some and full fare for others on an income level basis.
Steve: Your proposals will not plug the $100 million hole in the TTC’s budget, and in particular do nothing to address the nearly 30% of this that arises from WheelTrans.
LikeLike
Hope that most people will start using presto by then. It’s the best way to pay a fare.
LikeLike
Wow, TTC Councilors don’t have a table of price increases? Ticket/token/Presto prices increased from $0.50 in March 1979 to $1.00 in January 1990 to $1.50 in September 1995 to $2.00 in March 2005 to $2.50 in January 2010 to $3.00 in January 2017. That’s 11, 5, 10, 5, and 7 years. The cash surcharge has varied greatly in that time between $0.08 and $0.90. Looking at the past 20 years of fare hikes ignores the realignment 25 years ago in 1991, when adult fares were raised, senior fares dropped, student fares raised and grouped with seniors for pricing, and child fares given a haircut.
Rather than continually playing politics with one group or another, I’d like to see them simply the system and have two possible price changes: cash and fare media. Senior/Student numbers are completely unhinged. The Metropass:Cash Multiplier is now 55.6 trips and ticket is 56.9 trips! Thus, the maximum possible savings with tickets is $2.85. It’s buy 41, get 1 free!
Since 1996, Adult Metropasses have gone up by 76.2%, Adult tickets by 87.5%, Adult cash by 62.5%; Senior Metropasses by 59.9%, Senior tickets by 91.6%, and Senior cash by 55.6%.
Steve: The senior/student prices have not gone up by as much over this period because at one point there was a decision that some of these media (notably passes) were overpriced.
You did see my post about why that number is bupkis right? Yes, private transport gets more funding, but that number is just wrong.
LikeLike
I’m sure this is a naive question, but would the TTC not be far more efficient if some of the unfunded mandates imposed by the province, city and mayor were eliminated, formally funded or at least made explicit? For example, free rides for kids may or may not be a good long term marketing move, but it sure shouldn’t be imposed by the mayor. Wheels Trans demand would have climbed with an aging population, but for the province to change the access rules without providing direct financing sure seems likely dirty pool. To my mind public transit can play a great role in addressing social inequities, but so long as the web of hidden subsidies and buried regulation goes on, service will remain erratic and planning will stay haphazard.
Also it may go without saying, but I’m pretty sure every other city department considers themselves exceptional and unfairly treated by the proposed 2.6% budget cut. Some, including the TTC, might actually have a case. However the mandate mess makes it hard to be sympathetic.
LikeLike
Steve, I’m new to your blog, so you may have covered this elsewhere. … “Depreciation” caught my eye. Usually, depreciation in an income statement is a kind of paper charge against income. You’ve spent a million dollars cash on some widget, and every year for five years you deduct $200,000 from income. But every other item in the budget above looks like a cash item, not an accrual. What is depreciation? Is it actually capital replenishment, i.e., spending money to update some capital good?
Steve: Yes. Some items the TTC purchases as capital assets are not recognized as “capital” for subsidy purposes. The TTC buys them from its own working funds and depreciates them over their useful life in the standard manner. The funds generated this way from the operating budget go back into capital as one of the funding sources.
The issue for 2017 is that the TTC wants to move depreciation onto the city’s capital account, but the city sees this as simply a roundabout way to get more operating subsidy via the city’s “capital from current” spending which is part of their opex.
LikeLike
Has TTC ever thought why it’s revenue has started to decline as soon as PRESTO installation is in full swing? It is because PRESTO is not only implemented by extremely incompetent software programmers but it is also because of the fact that PRESTO steals money. PRESTO intentionally overcharges and charges for trips one never even took and there have been thousands of complaints mostly to no avail. What will be the alternative to PRESTO when the whole system has PRESTO? How will one pay using cash? Will tourists be forced to buy PRESTO? TTC says token prices are increasing from Jan 1st, 2017 but this is the same TTC which said that tokens are being phased out Dec 31st, 2016. See the incompetence? The rising fares are going to result in more fare disputes which will result in more delays as vehicles are taken out of service and more operator assaults and more money for PRESTO to steal not just from customers but also from agencies like the TTC.
LikeLike
I truly know nothing about funding and politics, please pardon my ignorance.
Is it possible to raise an issue in the next provincial election to see which parties are willing to contribute targeted funds to the TTC operating budget. By targeted funds I mean specific subsidies to the operating budget for student/senior tickets and if possible special rate tickets for disadvantaged. It means the money doesn’t go into the TTC slush fund but certainly eases TTC costs where it is most needed. The Conservatives will not support this. I have no idea how Liberals or NDP would react.
Steve: A long time ago, there was a separate subsidy for seniors’ fares but this is long gone. The Star reports today that that there are plans for a reduced price for lower income riders, although part of the proposal involves future contributions from other levels of government, plus an offset from reducing the discount now received by groups like seniors. One gaping hole in targeted subsidies is WheelTrans which has fast growing costs thanks to increases in legislatively-mandated eligibility.
Too much of this sounds like shuffling money among existing accounts rather than producing generally new revenue for transit, plus the usual “let the other guys” pay for it approach that dooms the idea to never getting beyond the announcement stage.
LikeLike
The TTC needs to match revenues to the services provided. If they have to provide service for WheelTrans customers, find the money and not raise price. Raising prices will drive people away which is the opposite of what transit should do. Once driverless EVs are in production, a lot of transit users will not use transit. Why send Junior on the bus to school when a driverless EV would be safer (no danger from criminals) and provide a private environment?
People look for alternate solutions when transit is too expensive. Manila residents use Jeepney and Bangkok uses cheap scooters to get around. Manila has the best transit system in the Orient until WWII. An e-bike is only about $2000 to acquire. After that, it costs pennies to run. Why would be people go wait for the Queen car that is crowded? $2000 cannot even purchase 24 months worth of Metropass. E-bikes are virtually maintenance free unlike a gasoline powered vehicle. No insurance, no parking and no license.
The City of Toronto needs to amend the law that allows the TTC to expand to real estate and other business. Look at Delta Airlines’ purchase of the Trainer refinery in Delaware. Not only does it produce Jet A, it also produces gasoline. That refinery made a profit of $300 million USD for DAL in 2015. If the TTC issues an IPO and purchases a refinery from Suncor, it will have access to cheaper to diesel and have another source of income by selling Jet A to the likes of United Airlines. DAL also has the lowest CASM in the industry from the JFK hub due to this fact.
Real estate is another way to raise money. There is a reason why even a profitable company like JR East are quickly building retail on top of stations. Premium shopping space can net $100 USD per sq ft per month. By 2017, there will be Louis Vuitton, Dolce Gabana and other fine brands at major JR East stations in Tokyo. Every dollar invested in premium real estate can yield 10% per annum. JR East is only profitable due to real estate. Rail passenger traffic only generates about 40% of revenues. While heavily used lines in Tokyo make a slight profit, they also operate many lines in rural Japan where less than 200 people per day use a station. This is a good way to subsidize routes like the Spadina extension.
LikeLike
Just for fun, Byford should do the following…
1) Contact a temp agency for 10,000 temporary fare inspectors (enough that they can supply multiple per stop, multiple per vehicle)….
2) On a specific day – lets say budget day 2017 – the fare inspectors fan out across the city
3) The fare inspectors stop any and every person they can for the entire day – including rush hour kettling and pinch point stops – along with multiple passes through vehicles along each route
4) They hand out tickets at the max amount – and as many as they can – including multiple to the same people if they don’t get off the vehicle at the next stop
5) The deal with the temp agency is that any tickets that are paid in full – all the revenue will go to the temp agency
6) The deal with the court system is – HAHA – deal with it
7) The deal with the city councillors is – you said you wanted more fare inspectors – we got you more fare inspectors – you will now likely be inundated with calls from pissed off riders who were stopped multiple times for fare checks – despite having paid for their tickets
8) Still we will not make any money, likely the temp agency won’t either….but nobody ever will be able to say – I’ve not see a fare inspector on the TTC before….and journalists will not be able to use that trope in their articles anymore…it will have to be “I haven’t seen a fare inspector since that crazy day in 2017 when the TTC was totally unusable and I never want to see one again…”
LikeLike
I read today in the Star
The article goes on to say that maybe the existing concession fares should be looked at.
While I agree that targeting subsidies to those who actually need them is a good idea, I would be concerned that a vast bureaucracy will have to be created to determine who should get subsidies and then issue them with cards or ID of some sort so they can claim it. In addition, having a ‘transit subsidy card’ could be embarrassing for people as it would identify ‘the poor’. Giving a subsidy to everyone in a group (seniors, children for example) may result in some (many) people who do not need it getting a subsidy but it does have far lower overhead administrative charges. Of course, the real problem is that some people have less money than others and some simply do not have enough. The better answer might be a guaranteed annual income and the elimination of all concession fares and subsidies of this kind.
LikeLike
That’s the fundamental catch-22 with the TTC. They have little physical capacity to run more service, so encouraging ridership means more crowding. Ridership in 2016 is below budget, but still record setting with +0.4% growth over 2015. Canada-wide transit (the 10 largest systems) use was down 1.7% in each month of Jan-March and up 0.7% in April. So either, the TTC is dominating the national statistic, or transit use in Toronto isn’t suffering specifically due to TTC-related issues.
Rolling back prices to 2003-2005 levels would change the $60-100M budget gap into a $333-480M hole.
Provincially mandated improvements (accessibility) have a fixed deadline for implementation. AODA was passed in 2005 and full implementation for 2025. With other budget issues, we’ve kept kicking the can down the road.
Part of the issue was an ongoing effort in Toronto to curtail Wheel Trans spending by restricting the definition for eligibility. Which is the dirtier solution: reducing access to not pay or increasing access and not paying?
It would do everyone a favour if WheelTrans were spun off into its own bottom line (they can contract services from the TTC). This would relieve some of the TTC’s budgetary pressure and make it harder to argue the difference in property taxes in order to make Toronto more accessible.
The TPS has submitted an operating budget with a 0.2% budget cut ($1002M); TFS are expecting a 0.8% increase ($421.6M); Toronto EMS are expecting a 1.2% budget cut ($74.8M); Toronto Water are expecting a 1.6% budget cut ($379.8M), but that’s really a 0.4% gross expenditures increase plus a 6.3% increase in revenue (water/wastewater surcharges going up 6.1%).
The TTC was deeded an ‘essential service’ in 2011, so its budget should be treated accordingly.
LikeLike
Mapleson suggests that $2700 per car per year of avoided costs and subsidies to the private car from Vancouver is off:
A range of other studies at around that time (20 years ago) maybe have been averaged out to get to that $2700, and of course it could be wrong – by being far far too low, especially with the impacts of climate change, and I fear we’ve tipped towards the climate chaos end of things and methane pulse from the melting permafrost, and meanwhile, in Caronto/Moronto, the City has been unable to repaint that tiny bit of Bloor St. E, between Sherbourne and Church St. for bike lanes for $25,000, despite it being in the 2001 Bike Plan, and the only remnant of the 1992 study to make it in to the TBP.
The healthcare impacts of automobility are also likely considerably more: especially if we could manage to trace cars contribution to cancers. Plus indirect issues like obesity etc., going far past the direct hits and deaths.
The society is ‘carrupt’ – there’s lots of company for sure – but that head-up-tailpipe collective approach isn’t just dooming us, but many many other relative innocents. The fresh ECO CO2 report again indicates transport is the leading problem for us in Ontcario; but we get massive spends for a one-stop subway in sprawl that will blight budgets for years, if it hasn’t already started. New surface routes (eg. Gatineau Hydro corridor), and surface priority for transit eg. DVP and Gardiner/Lakeshore (as a lesser priority vs. a Front St. transitway) are what’s needed and overdue.
LikeLike
We essentially have three parties that could form the next government: OLP, NDP, and OPC.
In 2014, the GPO (Green Party) had “dedicated revenue tools like gas taxes and parking fees to raise $3-billion annually to build and operate transit”.
The OLP’s position is that they grant a general tax credits to seniors and low income workers, plus a general transit/transportation subsidy to the City in the form of the gas tax. Running a deficit means any new funding would either come through more debt (something they are trying to avoid to not get downgraded) or more taxes/user-fees.
The NDP’s position is unclear on operating subsidies and heavy on capital projects.
The OPC’s position is likely to be highly populist, so asking everyone to pay a little more to fund a specific few is unlikely. Unless someone takes an outside position, this is most likely a non-issue.
As an interesting aside, here is the transcript of Queen’s Park on March 13, 1979 where the NDP were saying the transit operating subsidy wasn’t enough (and how Scarborough deserved Light Rail, like North York). At the time fare-box revenues were expected to be 72% for 1M+; 65% for 200K-1M; 60% for 150K-200K.
That was for the TTC, 50% operating deficit from 1972-1975 and 13.75% from 1976-1979.
Basically, the cycle is a big splashy investment in operating subsidies, then slowly scaling back (or ‘freezing’ levels).
The 2016 budget had a fare box revenue of 71% with $483M subsidy/shortfall.
LikeLike
Find the money? By looking under the bus seats? Basically, they’ve squeezed every stone and still need to find the money in property taxes.
It’ll be interesting to see how UBER handles safety once they can’t blame drivers anymore. Just look at the number of reports of rape, sexual harassment, or assault to see how much safer public transit already is.
Because it’s February and -20?
Why should the TTC be operating a refinery? At worst it should be bought by the City and the revenue dedicated to the TTC.
Unfortunately, Toronto doesn’t have the density of Tokyo. Also, the TTC doesn’t own most of the most valuable spaces. Bloor Street can see rent of $325/sq.ft. while Queen St. W. can see $110/sq.ft. but everything else is much less. Average commercial rent in Toronto is around $10/sq.ft.
The main issues would be training and unionized job. Regular fare inspectors hourly wage is $27.45 to $34.31, so 10K on an 8-hour shift would only cost $2.2M for the day. If they need 9 days of training, that’d put it at a wash.
There are already some targeted subsidies (for example, Mandatory Special Necessities Benefit Request form for medical appointment transportation for those on ODSP). The idea would be a Presto fare category, so the card would not be identifying (the need for ID would be equal to having a child/senior fare on Presto and needing to show photo ID to match the name), so nothing ‘embarrassing’.
I’m a big supporter of MINcome and simplification of our tax/subsidy/social services. However, that would be a provincial or federal project, whereas the TTC/City can do something in the meantime to band-aid the issue.
Steve: There is already a report on the Executive Agenda for next week about targeted subsidies, and I will be writing about it soon. In brief it does a good job advocating for the very poor, but then treats everyone above subsistence level as one big group. Scroll down to item 10a and read “Fair Pass: Transit Fare Equity Program for Low-Income Torontonians”.
LikeLike
The idea that driverless cars (EVs or otherwise) will displace public transit in a city like Toronto is just bunk. The problem that driverless cars “solve” in terms of traffic congestion is parking in high-density, high-traffic areas. The driverless car can drive you somewhere and then drive back to your house and park in your driveway. The thing is, taxicabs do the same thing, but in very large cities like Toronto, congestion is not as much a function of lack of parking space as it is of simply, the number of cars on the road. Look at Manhattan – 80-90% of the cars on the road are taxis, yet still the traffic is horrible.
In North America, where people get driver’s licences at age 16 and where cars are very easy to drive (wide roads, car-oriented urban planning, 90%+ cars with automatic transmission, high automotive safety standards, large and comfortable vehicles on average, etc. etc.), people by-and-large do not choose transit over driving because they don’t like to (or can’t) drive, but because they don’t want to be stuck in traffic. Driverless EVs don’t change this fact, you’re still stuck in traffic and it’s still faster to go downtown by subway.
Second, in order to put junior on that driverless car all by himself, the family will have to BUY a driverless car – because if they had a car already sitting on the driveway because a parent is not at work – that parent would simply drive junior to school, if that parent was so worried about the possibility of crime and having a “private atmosphere” (speaking of crime, I’m going to venture out and say that a kid is far more likely to get beaten up or robbed at school then on a TTC vehicle). Of course the alternative is a driverless taxi in such a future, but wait, taxis already exist today, and kids rich enough to afford it take taxis and uber to school.
Third, it’s going to be AT LEAST 20 years until people are comfortable with putting Junior in a driverless car all by himself.
Driverless cars may render public transit obsolete in villages or towns with 2 to 5 bus lines. Or they might kill off public transit in larger towns and midsize cities which are completely car-oriented in terms of urban planning and public spending and which have bad, undeveloped, and underfunded transit systems. However the idea that driverless cars will significantly impact the need for transit in large and huge cities with high densities of population is a typically North American anti-transit idea which makes no sense whatever.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is the increase in costs for Traction Power related to the anticipated late 2017 opening of the YUS extension or is it related to an increase in rates billed by Toronto Hydro?
Steve: It’s the rates according to comments in the budget report.
LikeLike
This Catch-22 is I’d say the biggest problem when it comes to managing flows of people in Toronto. Despite the terrible traffic jams, you can’t really discourage more people from driving because if they get out of their cars – where do they go? Sure, offpeak there’s a lot capacity, but during rush hour? It’s overflowing.
Fortunately, there is a very straightforward and “easy” way to resolve this Catch-22. Unfortunately, it requires spending A LOT of money – and there is no wide consensus existing (nor likely to exist in the near future) that this money should be spent. Raising the money is not the issue, the wide political and social agreement – the lack thereof that is – that we should raise the money is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What other studies are you referring to because $2700 from Metro-Vancouver was one of the highest in that date range. Try this 1991 paper for example.
Since 1990, Transportation GHG emissions have grown by 23.4%, but intensities have decreased by 18% per vehicle km and 45% by freight tonne-km, but huge increases in both. There has been roughly a 25% increase in the number of passenger vehicles on the road while freight volume-distances have risen 180%. Freight accounts for roughly 1/3 of GHG emissions for the transportation sector. It’s one of the ironies of climate initiatives that better fuel efficiencies for cars has resulted in a net increase in GHG as people drive more.
Over the long-term, we should switch to a more shared transportation system, but in the meantime, the biggest gains would be in the Electric Vehicle segment. With around 850K new cars sold in Ontario annually, a 10% share in sales would reduce passenger vehicle emissions by roughly 1.1%. A 25% rebate ($8K) would cost about $680M. How does that compare to transit investment?
LikeLike
Yes, I was in the legislature that day as a civilian guest and I applauded the NDP for it’s statements. Thanks for the memories. North York deserved Light Rail and yet it got subways due to the fact that some of the richest neighbourhoods in the country are in North York. Scarborough deserved Light Rail in 1979 but all we got was heavily polluting diesel buses as we have some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country and our population has since grown exponentially that Light Rail won’t be able to provide enough capacity and we deserve a subway now owing to our very high density and population. Steve, I hope that you will join me in denouncing the fare increase as yet another cash grab by the TTC brass. If the TTC is short of money, then why don’t you denounce free rides for those 12 and under and more importantly those claiming to be 12?
Steve: Well for starters, I was arguing for LRT in North York, but this was sandbagged by the TTC and by Mel Lastman. I remember sitting in his office when he said to me that “real cities don’t use streetcars”.
As for the free kiddies’ rides, I didn’t agree with them when they came in, just as I do not agree with fare freezes because this is never, ever offset by money to operate better service.
You seem to want me to do a lot of denouncing without bothering to remember that I have been at this for decades.
LikeLiked by 1 person
John Tory’s proposed toll charges on the DVP&Gardiner must be some kind of publicity ploy. As many have pointed out in Steve’s blog, including Steve, a sum like $200Million per year, minus costs, is a drop in the bucket compared with the amount required by the TTC to get back on its operating feet. It’s a much larger bucket if one considers all the projects planned for the next decade. John’s $3Billion stub line to Scarborough is a case in point.
So, is the mayor doing his best to ‘save’ the TTC, only to be voted down at council, after a rash of public indignation? I have no idea, but I wouldn’t want to be living on any of the alternate routes to our new toll roads, if he is serious.
Let’s see: First we cut taxes, then we add tolls, then we build ourselves a world class transit system based upon what we know is best for all those outsiders who have the temerity to work in Toronto.
LikeLike
As TTC fares increase, could we have at least subways begin earlier than 6am. People do have to travel earlier these days and farther. Let’s be a world class city.
LikeLike
Steve, I enjoy your comparisons of services now and then. My favorite was your piece on the Bloor shuttles and the lessons we might learn from them. So I’m curious what is your take on the current cash crunch and service doldrums in a historical context? Are we at a nadir here or do we have it relatively good?
Steve: The last time things were this bad was the early to mid 1990s, but then we had a genuine recession. The fiscal situation today at the city is thanks to simplistic thinking focussed on “no new taxes”. Even with Tory’s change of heart, it will take a very long time to catch up for the past six years.
LikeLike
The new Toronto Metropass rate for seniors is CAD $1401 per year. In the city where I now live, it is about CAD $17 per year …. where incomes are one third those in Canada. The transit system is much better than in Toronto.
LikeLike
It is likely that concepts such as an electric driverless multi-seat taxi will become more viable as technology develops. A fundamental paradigm shift could occur sooner than many of us currently think.
Steve: Sad to say, that argument shows up commonly from those who would say that transit investments are a waste because transit will be obsolete. Try telling that to people waiting for the Dufferin bus.
LikeLike
Whoa, wait a minute there. Law of Unintended Consequences coming up.
If you sharply reduce the consumer price of an electric commuter vehicle, you also provide an economic incentive for households to increase vehicle ownership (go from no cars to one, or one car to two), not just to switch types; and for individual commuters to thereby switch from public transit to driving themselves.
Both effects have negative social and environmental consequences. Selling more cars has a whole host of environmental consequences, as there are steep GHG and other environmental costs to the manufacture of new cars (especially as relate to the manufacture of batteries.)
Moving people off of transit and into individual cars – even electric ones – increases road congestion, which has a GHG cost related to all those fossil-fuel vehicles still on the road. (Obviously there are also all the unpleasant economic costs of congestion which I need not belabour.)
And while Ontario’s electricity generation is mostly from low- or no-GHG sources (hydro and nuclear), we still get a respectable chunk – about a sixth – from gas and other fossil fuel sources. In other words, even fully-electric cars aren’t fully emission-free; they just move some emissions to other times and places. The emissions-per-passenger-mile from an electric vehicle compare favourably to those from a solo gasoline automobile — not so much against a moderately-loaded diesel bus or train.
Overall, any approach which subsidizes individual automobile ownership is a questionable public policy strategy from a social and environmental standpoint. Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. Instead of an $8000 giveaway for each electric car, what if we imposed an $800 tax on every new non-electric sale? Instead of giving away $680 million, it raises $680 million for transit; it doesn’t incentivize car ownership; it’s a mild disincentive to non-electric vehicle purchase; it doesn’t massively and disproportionately subsidize households that are already wealthy enough to purchase one or more new cars; it compensates society to an extent for the external costs shrugged off by car owners. What’s not to like?
Steve: One of the big problems of “the market” seen on a country or continent wide basis is that huge amounts of it have no transit service to speak of and thus no alternative to car ownership. The auto industry addresses market in that context, not in the bubble of a few large cities where transit has some credibility. Even saying that, one does not have to travel far from Bloor and Yonge to reach areas where a car-free lifestyle is impossible, and a car-oriented mindset drives political decisions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We need to be aware that every price increase on TTC fares changes the attractiveness of transit. Driverless EVs are coming down in price. Imagine a world without auto accidents, auto insurance would cost a few hundred dollars per year at most. Computers do not crash into each other while checking text message or replying a Twitter message. One of the major car ownership cost is insurance. Remove that, it makes the car more attractive whether we like it or not. The CANDU 6 reactors will make electricity cost much lower than today and zero pollution. When Darlington gets expanded, we will have lower electricity rates. A Fukushima type melt down is not possible with the new CANDU 6. This means much lower liability insurance.
Driverless EVs have a few advantages even though congestion may make it slower than transit. Transit stops will never be 71F year round. One can remote start a car and have the AC or heater on prior to stepping in one. Even inside transit vehicles, it will never be 71F year round. Bombardier has a huge problem with their HVAC system. It is always too cold or too hot. This happens in their CRJs as well. Transit will never be as comfortable, look at the 10 way adjustable seats on the Ford Fusion. Since a car is private space, one can have confidential conversations. Driverless EVs make the long morning commute more bearable. This is the issue.
For disclosure purpose, I firmly believe that the prosperity of a country is based on how much infrastructure is built. This means things like HSR service to major cities and metros for inner city travel. The TTC needs to improve so that it will not be made obsolete by technology. When Pan American introduced the Boeing 707 Clipper service, within 10 years, it put an end to rail inter city travel and trans Pacific cruise ships. Remember that promotional movie from Pan American, “The Magical 6.5 hours from New York to London” A fare increase without better hard and soft product is a hard sell. A fare increase with 20km of metro extension and expanded 10 minute bus network is much easier to swallow.
Existing TTC stations are much harder to unlock value from since it does not occupy large amounts of empty land. Everyone will agree that bulldozing buildings around Woodbine Station is a non starter. However, when Line 2 gets extended to McCowan and Sheppard, bulldozing the Canadian Tire there will be relatively easy. In its place, the TTC can easily attach a shopping mall next to the station. Canada lags behind the US in retail sq ft per capita. So, there is always more room for retail expansion.
What is wrong with the TTC running oil refineries? I have purchased insurance products from Sony and a Sony Walkman. My friend has his house built by Panasonic. Companies have many lines of business so that it can survive. If Ricoh do not make photocopiers, there will be no money to develop Pentax cameras. Why do we care what the TTC does as long as transit is comfortable, fast, efficient and on time?
The underlying problem is that the TTC do not invest enough on the capital side. They know that labor and legal costs are rising. They should use technology to combat it so that we still have a lower price product. The TTC has stop buying hybrid bus, which is absurd. Going from a 5MPG to 10MPG bus will half the fuel cost. Driverless bus will also reduce labor cost. We cannot have a world class transportation system if we do not stay at the forefront of technology. Imagine what McDonalds would be without replacing humans with digital kiosks. Would you pay $10 for a Big Mac?
LikeLike
BENNY CHEUNG: The underlying problem is that the TTC does not receive enough money for capital expenditures, operations, or maintenance. If a hybrid bus doubles up on fuel mileage, but costs triple to maintain, it is going to be sent to the old bus home at an earlier date.
As for your comments on the broadening of the TTC, and the use of technology in general, I have one thing to say: SOME of your suggestions will look great in 20 years, but you are making them at a time when flexible thinking is at an all time low.
LikeLike
You may want to look up the term “Malicious Code” before painting the future with so many rainbows.
LikeLike
Mapleson had asked what other studies of car subsidizing I was referring to, and from drowning in piles of paper I am not sure where the original material from a 20+-year-old Sierra Club of US newsletter went, but I do have a copy of the salient chart, and I’ll give authors, then their subsidy range. Ketcham and Komanoff, $4,220; Littman, $1037-4,631; Mackenzie, Dower and Chen, $2,312; Moffet and Miller, $1,370-$2,739; Vorhees, $3,647. I don’t know how many, if any of these are online, and like the WWLRT EA, if it’s not online, it doesn’t seem to be real.
Further good and newer work is in the Perverse Cities book by Pamela Blais; I don’t think the Conference Board of Canada’s recent work was necessarily as complete as all that – perhaps unfair, but I think the CAA may have paid for it, so there’s some automatic suspicion and disbelief.
I’m glad Mapleson brought up the climate context: it’s a disaster (car-isis?); and that includes the embodied energy of all vehicles and infrastructures that tend not to be registered in our GHG accountings. The fresh ECO climate report is actually pretty good on referring to the consumption-based accountings, and we sure are pigs, and we do need to be cognizant of ALL the consumption trails, including batteries, tires, plastics, metals, etc.
LikeLike
When looked at in context, it really seems that the cash/token fare for the TTC is not out of line with other systems. I think 3 bucks, give or take, is pretty reasonable for the service you get. What bothers me is the pricing of the Metropass. Even if you factor in the 15% tax rebate, you still need to use it more than a daily roundtrip commute just to break even! (Yes, I know there’s some intangible convenience benefit, which is why I’ve occasionally bought passes in months where the numbers don’t quite add up, but with the Presto rollout that’s quickly fading). Instead of benefiting their most loyal customers, the TTC seems out to gouge them as much as possible. Additionally they don’t seem to realize that increasing the population density of pass holders doesn’t just affect the commuting mode-share, but also drives more off-peak trips (the kind that have little marginal cost to serve), as people opt for transit to run errands or for social excursions, the latter especially providing a knock-on effect in fare-paying travel companions.
And I’m generally supportive of the low-income fare initiative. I could absolutely see a reasonable argument taking the stance that a passenger is a passenger, and that it’s not the TTC’s business to be determining who gets what kinds of discounts. But, since we already go down the road of concession fares, it seems reasonable to me to target them towards those that need them. In particular, I would argue that seniors discounts should be rolled back as targeted programs ramp up.
Steve: There is a fair amount of confusion in talk about targeted subsidies. First off, seniors are a powerful voting block not to be messed with. We know from demographics that this group is growing. Also, we are told that as a group seniors are sitting on piles of cash thanks to the relatively affluent period of their working lives and the artificial increase in wealth through real estate ownership. (Full disclosure: I meet both of those categories.) However, we are also told that poverty among seniors is a major problem.
Similarly, the student discount (especially the one for post secondary students) came in after much lobbying by students who “could not afford” full TTC fares and whose future, we were told, was vital to the economy. A bit of a squeaky wheel there, in the wider context of urban poverty, but that’s where the subsidy came from.
The free rides for children were a purely political move by John Tory to appear to “do something” after he was elected and found out that SmartTrack would not solve every problem known to humanity (and possibly to several nearby planets). It was touted as an anti-poverty move, but of course not all children are in poor families.
In every class of potential TTC rider there will be the quite affluent, the just-getting-by and the poor. Sorting out who should get what subsidy is a challenge, and it must also address other functions public transportation is supposed to provide including environmental benefits and the economic value of enabling high concentrations of jobs that could not exist without transit. Downtown is the most obvious example, but now we hear from the Airport district that it cannot expand employment because the roads are full.
And so the question becomes whether the only function of a fare system is income redistribution, or if it is also to encourage better use of transit by everyone including those who can afford alternative modes.
LikeLike
I’m a senior of many years and much experience. I don’t believe for a second that young people have it as easy as we did, all those years ago. It disgusts me to hear the constant demands of my contemporaries that they receive greater and greater subsidies. Where do they think this money would come from?
It will come from the pockets of the young. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about with skyrocketing educational costs, a chronically unstable job market, and crazy politicians; we expect them to somehow do it on their own. Better still, we vote for conservatives because they promise us tax cuts for simpletons; even though most of us know that these ‘public servants’ will destroy everything that’s good about Canada, given enough time.
By all means, help the poor in any generation; the rest should be responsible for their own lives.
LikeLike
Not only fare-by-distance, but also fare-by-time-of-day, and fare-by-direction. Compound this with the “TTC Think” that the time-based fare is the worst possible thing that can occur, and I do wonder just how they will implement this.
To clarify what I mean by this, I am currently in London UK on business and getting around on transit. My first impression was, “Wow! Are fares ever expensive!” For example, travel from Gloucester Street to Acton Town on the District line is nine stops from zone 1 to zone 3. This is about 5.6 km, which is similar to travelling from Yonge to Dundas West on the Bloor-Danforth line. The fare when travelling during the rush is GBP3.30 ($5,68 Canadian!) and outside of rush is GBP2.80 ($4.82 Canadian!). Now, everything is relative, so as a benchmark, consider that gasoline is about GBP117.9 right now ($202.8 Canadian).
Then, when the end of the day rolls around, I found myself scratching my head over why the balance on my Oyster Card was still so high. The answer: daily price caps. A day that has me getting on and off the system enough times to expect to go through 18-20 pounds on the card, ends up being just under 10. Still a bit pricey, but not as astronomical as I had anticipated. In addition to daily price caps, there have been trips that cost nothing because the system sees them as the continuation of a previous trip – a trip with what the TTC would deem a stop-over in it.
With Presto, the TTC could implement daily price capping at the cost of a Day Pass. Fare-by-distance (or by-time or by-direction) might be more palatable to the public if daily capping is available, but I wonder if the TTC has the sense to realise this.
Steve: I remember TTC staff talking about daily price caps as a way to implement equivalent to Day Pass functionality, but without the nuisance of people actually having to buy a pass. THis was roughly the same time as they were also looking at time based transfers. Needless to say, none of this is going anywhere until the TTC sorts out how Presto will work in a full rollout, and which if any new discounts they wish to implement.
LikeLike