Fare evasion and enforcement are a common topic at TTC Board meetings, and for some time the sense has been that “there’s gold in them thar hills” among Commissioners. Debates can run for hours on what efforts should be launched, what policies for limited toleration there should be, and how much more can be spent on enforcement.
A fundamental flaw in these debates is that the presumed gross losses to fare evasion, based on field studies and estimates, is $140-million annually as reported by the City of Toronto’s Auditor General in March 2024. However, the TTC’s ability to recoup this missing revenue varies from place to place on the system because there are multiple ways to avoid paying.
- The most obvious case is simply to avoid tapping on to surface vehicles when boarding.
- Subway stations had “crash gates”, so-called because they were originally intended for cases where large volumes of riders needed to enter or exit quickly, notably for transfers to/from subway shuttles. To serve riders who did not have machine readable fares, these were left open for riders to enter on an honour system.
- Where riders do pay by dropping money in a farebox (either on a bus or in a station), there is no guarantee they will pay the full amount owed.
- Riders can walk into most subway stations unchallenged through bus and streetcar loops.
Much of the TTC’s focus has been on the first case, a rider who does not “tap on” to a vehicle, and until quite recently enforcement was directed at streetcars because of their multiple, unmonitored entrances.
TTC recently closed the crash gates so that riders wishing to pay cash must do so either at a fare vending machine. Ticket and token users (while these modes are still accepted) must use the station collector’s farebox, although whether anyone is present to monitor them varies by location and time of day. The estimated loss from open crash gates was $14.2-million per year, and from underpaid cash fares was $9.1-million. This leaves $116.7-million in other types of fare evasion.
In the 2025 Operating Budget, the TTC allocated $2.6-million for 69 additional fare enforcement staff. This is a part-year figure, obviously, as this only pays $37.7-thousand per employee. The anticipated new revenue is $12-million in 2025, and so the recovery ratio is about 4.6:1. That is a good return especially if it can be sustained.
There is no guarantee that hiring more inspectors will necessarily produce the same rate of return. A further problem is that with fares frozen, or increasing slower than wages, the cost of inspectors will go up faster than the recovered fare revenue.
New inspectors will be deployed to check riders getting off of buses in the paid areas of subway stations where inspection is easier than attempting on-board checks, especially on crowded vehicles. Absent fare inspection across the system, there are some types of evasion that will persist. The full estimated losses to evasion will never be recovered, and the implication that this amount would be available as new revenue is, to be kind, misguided.
Much information about evasion and enforcement is available in published reports, but this is not the only way the TTC spends money or foregoes revenue. Other areas do not get a comparable level of attention by the Board:
- The foregone revenue due to fare freezes and below-inflation increases.
- The cost of achieving standards to attract more riders to transit.
- The effect on service quantity and reliability through constraints on maintenance budgets.
Even when these are discussed, the topics are considered in isolation.
In January 2025 as part of the budget approval, the TTC Board voted to establish a Strategic Planning Committee with details to come back for consideration in February. It is now April, and there is no sign of the committee. Previous attempts by members of the Board to increase their participation in planning and budgets have been sandbagged by inaction. Is this a repetition? Is the Board actually willing to perform its oversight role?
The City of Toronto claims to be pro-transit with a strong desire to attract more riders out of their cars. This is not echoed by the planned funding even at the “nice to have” level to see what budgetary effects might result.
The 2026 Budget work will begin in mid-year, and if the Board expects to have any input beyond the most superficial level, now is the time for those discussions and the review of alternatives to occur. So far, there is little sign that this will happen, and the budget will land with little opportunity for substantive change.
We will continue to hear about fare evasion, that shiny, spinning disco ball that diverts attention from most other issues. Some added revenue may be found over time, but a dedicated program to improve the transit system requires more than fare enforcement can provide.
The TTC and Toronto have many policy areas where decisions affect revenues and costs. Fare evasion and enforcement is only one of these. Some decisions, notably about the amount of budgeted service and maintenance levels, never come to the TTC Board for debate, let alone as a set of options ranging from “nice to have” to “absolutely must have”.
It is quite clear that funding for transit capital and operations will not come easily with the many economic pressures Toronto faces, and that was so even before the launch of a trade war and its potential effect on government revenues and priorities.
The TTC needs to discuss strategy for its future and understand what might be possible so that alternatives aspiring for better transit are on the table, not swept out of sight. That’s what a Strategic Planning Committee is for, and why the TTC’s failure to create one is so disheartening.
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Steve Munro 