Toronto Transit Commission approves raising TTC fares, <br/ >delays service cuts - Transit Toronto

At its meeting yesterday, Wednesday, December 14, the Toronto Transit Commission approved the TTC’s 2012 operating, capital and Wheel-Trans budgets. It also agreed to raise TTC fares by ten cents, starting New Year’s Day, Sunday, January 1, 2012. By increasing fares by ten cents, the TTC gains $30 million in revenue that it needed to balance the 2012 operating budget.

The Commission also passed a motion from its Chair, Councillor Karen Stintz, to retain current service levels into January and not to change TTC loading and crowding standards until February. In February, TTC staff will adjust service to reflect the 2012 budget, but maintain current crowding standards during peak periods on some routes where it originally proposed decreasing service.

The TTC can save some of the service staff originally proposed to cut by using the savings it has gained from a lower price for diesel fuel. (The cost of the fuel is less than the TTC expected and had budgeted for.) Staff will also adjust the TTC’s 10-year capital budget to buy new buses for 2013. The new buses will cost $45 million and make sure that the TTC can continue, in future years, to meet the service adjustments the Commissioners approved yesterday.

The Commission also approved the principle of increasing fares by ten cents annually over the next three years, as part of a multi-year financing strategy to provide certainty to future budgets. The TTC will also continue to find efficiencies and savings inside the organization, as it has done this year, and continue to work with the City of Toronto to secure long-term, sustainable funding from both the provincial and federal governments. (Until the mid-1990s, the province of Ontario, for example, paid 50 percent of the TTC’s operating budget subsidy.) The TTC believes that predictable subsidy levels are critical in letting the TTC to plan service effectively for North America’s third largest transit system.

The TTC’s 2012 operating budget is $1.5 billion. Fares pay for more than 70 percent of the budget. A subsidy by Toronto property tax-payers almost exclusively pays for the balance of the budget.

The Commission also approved the TTC’s Wheel-Trans operating budget, but passed a motion requiring Wheel-Trans to give six months notice to users that it would no longer provide service to ambulatory dialysis patients. TTC staff recommended that, in 2012, Wheel-Trans remove the exception currently in place for dialysis patients who wouldn’t otherwise be eligible for Wheel-Trans service, to save $5 million. The Commission agreed that the Ontario Ministry of Health would be a better source to fund the service. TTC staff will continue working with the Government of Ontario to find a funding solution. Wheel-Trans will not accept any new ambulatory dialysis passengers.

From Sunday, January 1 until Tuesday, January 31, 2012, students and seniors using “old” tickets to pay TTC fares must add ten cents to the farebox to supplement their fare. Children with “old” child tickets require another five cents. The TTC will adjust vending machines to sell three tokens to passengers with a $10 bill, providing $2.20 as change, and to sell seven tokens with a $20 bill, providing $1.80 as change.

Starting, Sunday, January 1, cash fares remain the same as now: $3 for adults, $2 for seniors and students and 75 cents for children.

The cost of adult tokens increases from $2.50 to $2.60, the cost of senior and student tickets increases to $1.75 from $1.65 and the cost of child tickets increases to 60 cents from 55.

The TTC is also increasing the cost of passes and other fare media.

You view a list of the new fares here.