TTC puts distance-based fares in no-go zone
Zoned fares work for GO Transit, but setting Toronto transit fares according to distance would force the riders who travel farthest and have fewest choices to pay the most.

thestar.com
July 28, 2014
By Tess Kalinowski

GO does it. So does York Region Transit. Why doesn’t the TTC charge riders according to how far they travel?

Among the suggestions offered up in the Toronto Star’s Big Ideas series is the idea of zoned TTC fares that some readers see as an equitable source of badly needed TTC revenue. The roll-out of the Presto electronic fare card over the next five years makes it more technologically feasible.

But the people who would pay the most would be those who live farthest from downtown. Many of those neighbourhoods have high concentrations of low-income residents and fewer transit choices than other parts of the city, said Chris Upfold, the TTC’s chief customer service officer.

The TTC is not a for-profit enterprise. It sets fares according to how much money it needs to operate. While it’s possible to make money using zones, if the funds are needed, it’s simpler and just as fair to do a flat fare increase, said Upfold.

“Our costs aren’t really scaled to how far people are travelling,” he said. “If I’ve got a Finch bus out there, whether somebody is travelling one kilometre or 10 kilometres, I’ve got to run that bus all along Finch to pick people up and take them to where they’re going. So my costs do not vary, really, against how far people travel.”

Zoned fares would also mean an extra step for riders adjusting to Presto. In addition to tapping their card upon boarding, they would have to tap off again when exiting the system.

In Mississauga, which also has a flat-fare system, transit head Geoff Marinoff agrees that “fairness is achieved at the cost of complexity.”

At the end of the day, distance-based fares are fairly arbitrary.

“No matter where you draw the line, someone is just on the wrong side of it and is unhappy,” he said.

Having electronic readers at rail or subway stations is fairly easy, said Marinoff. Adding a second or third Presto reader to every bus or bus stop so riders can tap off upon exiting the vehicle is a more complicated and costly matter.

Could a zoned TTC fare system encourage the kind of development that would put jobs closer to homes to reduce congestion? The city’s head of transportation planning suspects not.

“If it did, it would be a fairly minimal impact,” said Tim Laspa.

People already have some ability to make those choices, notwithstanding factors such as the price of housing and lifestyle, he said.

Zoned fares are more common among long-distance rail services than local transit agencies, said Mary Proc, vice-president of customer service at GO, which has used distance-based fares since it started in 1967.

GO customers like it because it is easy and it is fair, she said. Riders pay the same price by distance whether they take a GO bus or train.

They also prefer GO’s recent fare increase policy, which levels a percentage increase on the distance-based price rather than just adding an across-the-board amount.

Like GO, York Region Transit sees its distance-based system as a matter of fairness. When a customer crosses from one of the three zones into another, they pay an additional dollar on their fare.

“The rationale was to offset the increased service to the northern part of the region and to bring in some additional revenue through zone supplement,” said Ann-Marie Carroll, acting general manager.

Only about 2.6 per cent of riders pay to cross into a second zone. Last year, that raised $600,000. It’s tracking to be about the same this year.

But because the service is based on demand, customers who pay more also get fewer buses.