Disappointing GO-TTC co-fare program has lessons for SmartTrack

Fewer than 1,000 TTC riders paid the $60 premium to ride a less crowded, faster GO train downtown.

Thestar.com
Feb. 8, 2016
By Tess Kalinowski

Price matters. That's the inescapable conclusion at the end of a year-long test of a combined TTC-GO fare that attracted a disappointing 882 riders, says Councillor Mike Layton.

The fare integration pilot program didn't have the affordability or the flexibility to attract Toronto commuters, said Layton.

It points to the complex problems Metrolinx faces in developing a region-wide fare policy, said one senior official at the provincial agency.

The co-fare pilot also comes as Mayor John Tory's SmartTrack plan is being developed with an eye to putting more Toronto commuters on the GO tracks running through the city - a plan he has said is based on allowing Toronto residents to ride for the price of a TTC fare.

That's critical, said Layton. Only 74 TTC riders a month forked over an extra $60 for a sticker on their Metropass allowing them a faster, roomier ride downtown on GO trains between Exhibition and Danforth stations.

"I suspect that if we made it a more inexpensive fare that we would have seen more use of that," he said.

A ridership study of SmartTrack, released last month, showed it would attract only about a third as many riders if the cost was a higher GO-level fare.

Making the GO premium contingent on the $141.50 monthly cost of a Metropass may have also discouraged some riders from buying in to the year-long test on the GO Lakeshore lines, said Layton. Commuters in the Liberty Village area of his ward might want to use GO only one way or bike or walk sometimes, he said.

He thinks the GO fare should come at the same $3.25 it costs to ride the TTC. The Presto card being rolled out across the TTC this year would also do away with the need to commit to a monthly pass.

Metrolinx, the province's Toronto regional transportation agency, says it will keep the sticker program going while it reviews the pilot results.

"There are many elements to successfully having people move from one mode to another. Fare is one of them, but not the only determining one," said Leslie Woo, Metrolinx chief planning officer.

"Access is huge - how do you actually get to where the service is? That includes simple things like way-finding. The third piece is the service itself - the frequency and reliability," she said.

Woo is behind a Metrolinx board report to be released Wednesday that offers a between-the-lines look at some of the ideas being considered. But it is far from final, and many basic questions - including which commuters might pay more or less than they do under the current system - remain unanswered, she said.

A flat fare for the whole region or a fare based on travel time aren't on the table.

What is likely, however, is a zoned system inside and outside Toronto.

Three main concepts are being considered:

• The first is to work with the existing system and "fix" some of the common irritants: double fares at the Toronto border, because more than 80 per cent of regional transit trips include the TTC; the lack of a TTC-GO co-fare; and GO fares for shorter distance trips, specifically Toronto GO users.

• Building a zone-based fare structure that would include larger zones for local services - trips in the five- to eight-kilometre range - which would accommodate most trips within one zone. Subway and GO trains within the city might have similar zones, while longer trips outside the city might be priced similarly to the current system. But Woo stressed that the fare would be the same regardless of the mode of transit.

• A kind of hybrid system that maintains a flat fare for local service, with a fare-by-distance system for longer rapid-transit trips. Variations on that are used in Washington, D.C.; London; Seoul; Tokyo and the Netherlands, according to Metrolinx.

A detailed business case will be developed for each of those scenarios that would go back to the board in June, said Woo.

There's more work to be done on senior, student and other concession fares, as well as the issue of equity, as to whether the system chosen might penalize longer-distance commuters, who tend to be less affluent than downtowners.

"The fare integration strategy that is being developed now between the TTC and Metrolinx will give the public much broader transportation and fare payment options once Presto is fully deployed across the TTC," said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.

The TTC's Main Street station, located about a block north of the Danforth station on the GO line, draws about 25,000 riders a day, and the King streetcar, used by many Liberty Village TTC riders for whom riding GO from Exhibition might be an option, carries about 60,000 people a day.

November saw the highest sales of co-fare stickers: 95. The vast majority, some 83 per cent, were sold at Danforth. Only 4 per cent were sold at Exhibition and the remainder at Union Station.