Report details plans for low-income Toronto transit fares

Report suggests the “Fair Pass Program” would provide relief for 200,000.

Thestar.com
Nov. 24, 2016
By Ben Spurr

A long-awaited city report to be published on Thursday will detail plans to provide financial relief to 200,000 low-income transit riders by cutting their fares by up to one-third, the Star has learned.

The report, which will be on the agenda for the mayor’s executive committee meeting next week, will outline recommendations for implementing what is being dubbed the “Fair Pass Program.”

A partial draft of the document obtained by the Star recommends that Torontonians who make less than 15 per cent above the low income measure be eligible. The discount recommended by city staff is 33 per cent for single adult fares, and 21 per cent for an adult monthly pass.

Any clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program or Ontario Works who already receive transportation supports wouldn’t qualify.

In an interview Wednesday, Mayor John Tory praised the Fair Pass plan as “ambitious, but necessary.”

According to the report, low-income Toronto families spend between 20 per cent and 35 per cent of their disposable income on the TTC, an amount the mayor described as “stunningly high.”

“The principle that we need to do something for this group of people who are the lowest-income people, who are having difficulty getting jobs or having difficulty getting to the kind of day-to-day things that a lot of us take for granted who may have a car or may have the means to use transit, to me that is a given,” he said.

The anticipated cost of the program, which would begin in 2018 and be implemented in three phases, is $48.2 million annually by 2021.

Funding for the first phase of the program would be “a property tax pressure,” according to the report. The second and third phases would be “subject to the availability of funding within the city’s operating budget and. . . federal and provincial cost sharing contributions.”

Tory suggested the cost of the Fair Pass could be also be offset by reviewing existing TTC concession fares.

The city spends $72 million a year to provide discounts to certain groups, including seniors, high school students, and children 12 years old and younger, but those concessions aren’t directly matched to riders’ ability to pay.

Tory said that it would be “common sense” to review the existing discounts and consider whether they should “apply as they do now to every single person across the board regardless of their income, or should we be focusing our efforts on people with lower incomes.”

While the mayor hailed the plan, it may not go far enough for anti-poverty advocates who for years have pushed Toronto to follow other cities like Calgary, Hamilton, and Saskatoon and introduce a low-income pass.

Karin Meinzer, co-chair of the Fair Fare Coalition, argued that transit should be free for all people on social assistance, including those already eligible for provincial transportation supports.

“If you look at the money that people receive, it’s really impossible” to live on, said Meinzer, who hadn’t seen the city report. “People really don’t eat in order to stretch their budget.”

She said that for low-income people who aren’t receiving social assistance, a monthly pass should cost no more than $50.

Council voted to study fare equity in 2014, and a report was expected by the end of last year. Michael Polanyi, a member of the advisory committee for the city’s poverty reduction strategy, said that action on the issue has been delayed long enough and that the program should be rolled out next year.

Polanyi, who also hadn’t seen the report, said waiting any longer would be “huge strike against the legitimacy and commitment to the poverty reduction strategy.”

The mayor argued that low-income fares shouldn’t be implemented until the TTC completes the switch to the Presto fare card system, which is scheduled for late 2017.

The first phase of the Fair Pass program would allow Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works clients who aren’t already eligible for transportation supports to sign up, and would begin in March 2018. By the end of that year, an estimated 36,000 people would receive the discount, at a cost to the city of $4.6 million.

The second phase would commence in 2019, the year following the municipal elections. At that point eligibility would be extended to an additional 30,000 residents who receive a housing or child care subsidy, at a cumulative cost of $12.5 million a year.

The third and largest phase would begin in 2020, and incorporate all other residents below the established income threshold. The phase would add nearly 130,000 people to the program, and by the end of 2021, an estimated 193,000 transit users would receive the discount.

Asked whether the TTC would support providing discounts to low-income riders, agency spokesperson Brad Ross said the organization would back such a plan as long as funding was provided to cover the discount.

The proposal is expected to be debated at the executive meeting next week, and is subject to the approval of city council.