Nine years in the making

Excal.on.ca
October 1, 2018
Victoria Silman

The YRT stopped servicing York on September 2, making it difficult for students and staff living in York Region to get to campus.

With the election coming up (and outrage amongst YRT users), many councillors are making it a priority to push for fare integration and transparency between the TTC and YRT to make the commute more accessible for those traveling to York.

However, the issue should be of no surprise for regional and city councillors. The agreement was made between YRT and the TTC in 2009--almost 10 years ago.

The agreement was originally made to avoid duplicate service as the subway now extends up to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. According to a media release from August 25, YRT was obligated by the agreement following the construction of the subway extension. Recently, it was formalized under an Operations and Maintenance Agreement between the TTC and YRT.

With current Vaughan Ward 5 Councillor, Alan Shefman, advocating to break down the fare-wall, one begs the question: Why now?

According to Allan Goldstein, a candidate for Ward 5: “Mr. Shefman didn’t say anything about this for nine years, and he only started to deal with it in the middle of an election campaign.”

Regarding the changes to service, Shefman says: “It applies to all those routes where the TTC  and the YRT interconnect.” However, when asked about other service changes, Shefman continues: “I’m not aware of other routes where they’ve done this in the past--I haven’t really had to deal with this--but it may have happened. I certainly haven’t heard any complaints about one of those changes, but I sure am hearing about this one.”

Addressing the current state of affairs in breaking the two-fare wall, Shefman says: “My timeline for the York University situation is yesterday. They know there’s a situation that’s negatively impacting all passengers,  specially students.”

The issue was also addressed five years ago, first in the Vaughan Citizen in March 2013, and again in the Thornhill Liberal in December 2013 in a piece written by MPP Gila Martow, who at the time served as the President of the Beverly Glen Ratepayers Association.

According to Goldstein: “Mr. Shefman either knew about it or should have known about it. I can tell you that Gila Martow, who is now our MPP, was making all kinds of noise about it at the time.”

In the piece, Martow iterates: “YRT’s data shows most of the area’s transit users are downtown commuters or York University students. Students want to get to campus quickly and safely, without being highjacked onto subways and rapidways to justify their construction.”

Goldstein emphasizes this fact: “It’s not just the students at York University--they’re in the news now and they’re financially vulnerable--but this is an issue for anybody that is travelling north and south.

“The two-fare wall has to be broken--I’m hoping with the assistance of the new provincial government, that we can make some headway on that,” he continues.

For Shefman, the goal is to create complete transparency within transit. “Ultimately, the transparency I would like to see is a Greater Toronto Transit Authority, where there is one transit authority that does not have artificial municipal boundaries, that operates for the people that use transit,” he says.

“I’ve been on this one for years, and nobody is willing to bite this particular bullet and do the hard work that needs to be accomplished to figure out how it can be. It’s not why it should be done, it’s simply how it can be done,” he adds.