TTC screws over transit users
I should be writing a paper, but I just saw something on Twitter that made me mad enough to write a blog post instead. According to Toronto Transit Commission director of corporate communications Brad Ross, the TTC will suspend all token sales tomorrow, and introduce a temporary adult ticket that will expire on January 31, 2010. This move, of course, is to prevent TTC users from stocking up on tokens now, before the 25 cent (11%) fare hike kicks in on January 3.
This entire fare hike situation is completely unacceptable. I understand there is a shortfall in the TTC budget, but forcing users to pay for the underfunding and mismanagement of Toronto’s transit system is not the solution. The fare grab will not solve the transit mess. By imposing the budget burden on those who can least afford, the fare hike will only further depress TTC ridership and lead to future budget shortfalls. It’s a vicious cycle — the TTC admits that for every 10 cent rise in fares, TTC ridership goes down by 3%, and TTC general manager Gary Webster says the 25 cent fare hike means risking the loss of at least 11 million transit users. Hiking fares will make the budget problems worse, as fewer riders means less revenue, more budget shortfalls, and more fare hikes.
There are ways to make up for the budget shortfall that do not involve gouging TTC users. Transit riders are a comparatively less wealthy segment of society and can ill afford to bear this burden, and the fare hike essentially imposes a new tax on low-income people. Imagine if the city voted to raise property taxes by 11% in one year — people would be outraged! Of course, taxing higher-income property owners would be highly unpopular and few politicians would want that on their record. But taxing the poor with a transit fare hike? Apparently, they’ve got no problem with that. (As an aside, politicians beware. The fare hike means I’m significantly less inclined to support TTC Chair Adam Giambrone if he runs for mayor in 2010, and I’m betting others feel the same.)
Instead of screwing transit riders, who help to make our city a greener, less congested place to live, Ottawa, Queen’s Park and City Hall must make transit a priority and provide secure and stable funding for the TTC. It’s a simply matter of priorities — if governments valued transit, they would find the money, or find ways to raise it. We could easily make progressive use of the tax system for TTC funding. The principle is simple — raise taxes on what we want to discourage, and lower taxes on what we want more of. Why not tax motorists more, and funnel that money to public transit? Introduce a congestion tax. Make motorists pay to drive downtown. Increase car registration fees. Tax some other group of rich people who can afford it.
The only good thing in this situation is that transit riders are starting to get angry, and it looks like a TTC rider’s union has sprung up. The group offers a series of investment-focused solutions that could help return the TTC to its former status as an award-winning transit system. Transit rider unions in other cities have helped lower fares and expand service, and I’m hopeful this group will have an impact. As the only OECD country without a national public transit strategy, it’s about time citizens force the government to adopt one.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jevon and Camille Labchuk, Robert Lavigne. Robert Lavigne said: RT @camillelabchuk New blog: TTC screws over transit users. http://bit.ly/8rEt9m #toronto #ttc #farehike (via @jevon) [...]
People who drive cars should also be more appreciative of those who choose to use public transit. During the Ottawa bus strike, it didn’t just hurt (the most) those who relied on public transit, but it greatly inconvenienced EVERYONE. Traffic was a nightmare! More public help for public transit benefits everyone, and I’d like to see motorist acknowledge how much they benefit from public transit in a not-so-obvious way.
Camille, you are directing a large part of your’ ire at the wrong party. The TTC is an independant commission. It is not a part of the city of Toronto, nor an agent of the Provincial or Federal governments. It is a management board that owns and operates the public transit network in Toronto. As such, it is completely reliant on two sources of funding. ‘Outside’ funding, which comes from operating, and capital subsidies, primarily from the other levels of government. The second is from internal sources, mostly fares, and some oddments like advertising revenues. Getting angry at the TTC for raising fares, is like getting angry at a Condo board for raising maintenance fees. Their choices are extremely limited, those being to reduce expenditures, or raise internal revenues. They cannot simply take on debt to finance their operating budget shortfall. You should be directing your ire at the governments that add capital budget, but then choke off operating subsidies. The TTC has very little leeway indeed.
But there is leeway with a smidgeon of creative thought. As with the recent inside worker strike in Toronto (see my comment at another canadiangreenblogger’s place, http://www.christindal.ca/2009/07/10/sick-bank/#comments , although he mostly fails to respond it seems, I hope he silently takes the lessons…), when small %s are at issue in local service provision, that is just about the best place to begin with a localized currency, or tradable transit chits distributed to all, with a “carbon pricing” rating involved, so many things come to mind. Why should people who need to hang together be at odds over so little, when the real enemy is misplaced financial overlordism’s intrusion into where it belongs not, local provision of community basics. They dominate the $, so partly opt out of $. There’s work to be done, willing workers, participating people to move about, a great quantity of goods & services procured locally by the workers involved…see, who needs it to all be in tight $?
The more Greens fail to put out creative stuff, the less and less relevant they become, just as the world could be getting ready to embrace them, alas.
TTC / GPC many parallels …
When cost go up, prices go up if unit sales stay the same. That is basic Economics 101.
It seems that this blogger wants someone else to pay when the TTC’s costs go up, because the TTC provides a service they use. Self-interested perhaps, but understandable. No-one wants their subsidy to be cut or reduced.
The same discussion is going on in the GPC at the present time. Who should pay for the GPC expenses when the money runs out or when the GPC wants to spend more money than they have? The people benefiting the GPC? Or others? Or both?
Expect the cost of being a GPC supporter to go up, if the GPC want to maintain the same services.
I don’t want “someone else to pay” for me to use the TTC. I want my tax dollars to pay for the TTC. If yearning for an affordable, world-class public transit system is “self-interested”, then I’m guilty.
Camille, I thought you were a student? If so, then which particular tax dollars that you are paying did you want to use to pay for your’ education, vs. transit? I guess that the property taxes that you pay on the house that you own could pay for the transit capital, and operating subsidies, and the income taxes on whatever, presumably part time earnings you have could pay for the cost of education? Or perhaps you don’t own a house, or pay income taxes, and you were exercising peotic license w.r.t. ‘your tax dollars’. In that event you were more thinking of what you wanted done with MY tax dollars?
Still, aside from this little semantic quibbling over whose money you want to spend, a decent, timely, and affordable public transit system will obviously benefit all citizens of Toronto, even those who end up paying for services that they have no intention of using.
Well municipal tax dollars pay for many things. If you want more tax dollars to go to TTC, then you have to want less to go somewhere else, maybe road maintenance, police service, fire service, arts funding. Someone else has to lose if you want your particular interest to gain. Either someone else pays or everyone pays by higher taxes. That’s how it works.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. We all pay taxes. Those who have more should pay more.
It’s not a question of cutting back on other services. Government should simply stop funding perverse industries, like nuclear, and put the money into things like transit. Couple that with green tax shifting and we’re on the way to solving our problems.
Crunches like these for Toronto, the inside worker strike and the fare hike, come when the general financialized economy is undergoing a squeeze. That squeeze is a combination of deliberate contraction by the overlords, as well as what happens when various other limits approach. The overlords are only valuable insofar as they have clustered expertise around them, offering biggest material rewards to those less motivated by deeper moral concerns and perceptions. Aspects of that expertise need to be made good use of to reconstruct local economic action on a different basis. Toronto is full of such expertise, a world capital no doubt. What constrains that expertise from better deployment? Apart from culturally entrenched misbehaviour, it is the situation at the very influential top of the most morally rotten, which most Greens seem so afraid to peer at. When I witness Greens on opposite sides of a fence jabbing needlessly at each others’ positions, it is very sad, when what they must do is look up, to see, say, an enforcing helicopter overhead, making sure the fence is not disturbed.
If rougher action is less appropriate, as in taking down the fence, walk around it. If higher authorities refuse to quickly enough and effectively shift taxation, their $ game needs to played that much less. The less you all look into alternative/complementary currency arrangements, the more you will be at needless loggerheads. Times would come where there would be significant conflict over the localized currency. But there would be far more opportunity for real democratic determination of next steps, and the extent of difficulties would be limited. Lesson 101 in “green” basics.
Come on already, think — then act — outside that box, make Greens relevant as only they can politically be, or risk increasing irrelevance.