Ontario budget proposes reduced GO fares for short trips and the province taking over the subway
Liberal government pledges to reduce to $3 the fares for all GO Transit trips that are either less than 10 kilometres or are taken within the city of Toronto, and wants to being talks about the province taking ownership of the subway.

TheStar.com
March 28, 2018
Ben Spurr

The provincial Liberals are offering plenty of goodies to Toronto-area transit users in their pre-election budget.

The 2018 spending plan released Wednesday by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government includes a pledge to reduce the fares for all GO Transit trips that are either less than 10 kilometres or are taken within the city of Toronto to $3 when using a Presto fare card.

Depending on the length of the trip, GO journeys within Toronto can currently cost Presto users more than $6.

The budget also proposes to work with transit agencies in municipalities adjacent to Toronto to provide discounts of $1.50 for Presto users who switch between the TTC and York Region Transit, Brampton Transit, Durham Region Transit, and Mississauga’s MiWay.

The government estimates there are 63,000 such trips taken every day.

Both of the fare measures would go into effect in early 2019. According to a government spokesperson the lower GO fares would cost the province an estimated $90 million over three years, while discounts between the TTC and the 905 agencies would cost an estimated $70 million over the same period.

The Liberal budget also takes a page from the now discarded platform launched by former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown by promising to “begin discussions” with Toronto about the province taking ownership of TTC subway lines.

The Liberals are pitching the suite of proposals as a way of increasing public access to “to a safe, reliable and seamless transit system” across the GTA.

The opposition parties have countered with their own transit promises. On Tuesday, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath got a jump on the budget by pledging to restore provincial funding for municipal transit agencies’ operating costs.

The province used to pay half of the annual operating costs for the TTC and other systems, but the funding was cut under former Ontario PC premier Mike Harris.

“For the last 15 years, the Liberal government has kept these devastating cuts in place,” said Horwath in a press release.

She asserted the TTC was “once the envy of the world” but now “struggles to provide reliable, frequent, comfortable and affordable transit service,” and Wynne “has repeatedly refused to restore the successful funding formula.”

In a scrum with reporters in the budget lock-up Wednesday, Ontario PC leader Doug Ford described transit as his “specialty,” and also promised to upload TTC subways.

He pledged to build more underground transit in Toronto, including extending the existing Sheppard subway (Line 4), which would require scrapping plans for an LRT along the route.

He also promised to revert to a three-stop extension of Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth) into Scarborough, which would cost at least than $1.2 billion more than the one-stop, $3.35-billion version currently being pursued. Ford didn’t say how he would pay for the more expensive plan.

“We should have regional transportation system that runs from one end of the GTA, through Toronto, to the other end,” he said.

“I believe in subways. I believe in rapid underground transit. As our city is growing up, we have to go under.”

In a press conference at city hall, Mayor John Tory said he was “deeply gratified” with the Liberals plans to lower GO fares, a move that is crucial to making his SmartTrack plan viable.

SmartTrack would add stations within Toronto in order to create a more local rail service on existing GO lines. In order to attract riders, the price of a trip would have to be comparable to the TTC, which charges $3 for Presto users.

“If you now have on a cost-effective or cost-competitive basis the ability to get on the GO transit system and use that inside the 416 for three bucks, studies have shown but also just common sense tells you a lot of people will use GO transit to get around and this will bring a measure of relief to TTC overcrowding,” he said.

Tory expressed strong reservations about ceding ownership of the subway system to Queen’s Park, however. He said he’d be willing to sit down at the table with the province but for the city to be “even slightly interested” in the proposal it would have to include “significant benefits” for the city, including provincial operating subsidies for bus and streetcar service.