TTC board to address declining ridership growth

TTC board member Shelley Carroll says its time for a new ridership growth strategy.

Thestar.com
March 22, 2016
By Tess Kalinowski

TTC board member Shelley Carroll wants the transit system to consider drawing up a new ridership growth strategy as it wrestles with the implications of declining customer revenues.

The city councillor planned to ask the TTC board on Wednesday to approve a "deep analysis" of that decline and develop a new growth strategy for all modes of the transit system.

She wants staff to report back by the third quarter of this year with "a multi-year strategy to address current ridership stagnation" and a plan to ensure it grows on an annual basis in the future.

"Ridership is the heartbeat of the entire system. When you cut service to the system to respond to falling ridership demand, it is further weakened," says a board motion emailed from Carroll's office Tuesday.

As ridership drops so too does the city's ability to attract the support of other governments for TTC expansion, says Carroll.

The source of her concern is contained in another board report Wednesday. It shows TTC ridership is growing below projected levels for the third year in a row. The TTC was already four million rides below its projections in the first two months of this year. If that continues, the system could be 13 million rides behind its 553 million year-end forecast resulting in a $30 million revenue shortfall.

Last year's ridership also fell about one million short of its 539 million target and one senior official suggested that overcrowding might be partly to blame.

Transit officials have already suggested that the city may have to make up the deficit and that curtailing a planned service expansion would be one way to trim costs.

Carroll's motion recalls the last time ridership floundered was in the 1990s when fare increases, declining service levels and a recession pushed riders off the TTC.

In 2003, the TTC developed a ridership growth strategy designed to lure riders back. It looked at where and why ridership had declined and the TTC developed an accompanying list of projects designed to attract riders back to the system.

That list was the basis for future investments when council had the desire and money to expand transit, she said.

It's time to take a similar approach now that the TTC is again facing "uncertain ridership," said Carroll.

She added that, "We are also questioning our roll in the city's transit vision given the presence of Metrolinx ... and the more central role of Toronto's chief planner in transportation and transit design."