The City of Toronto is proposing a 10-cent fare hike to the Toronto Transit Commission in the future. The fare hike, one of several proposals at a city council meeting, is expected to raise an estimated $36 million to subsidize transit operation.
This potential hike isn’t being met without opposition; TTC Chair Karen Stintz insists the TTC must stick to its initial promise of fare hikes no steeper than five cents, one of which occurred in 2013, and one in 2014.
Stintz wrote a letter to city manager Joe Pennachetti saying the money should be coming from the city, not from its commuters.
“We have reduced service levels, raised fares, outsourced operations, streamlined service delivery, improved cleanliness, developed a customer-service charter and continue to move more passengers than ever before,” she wrote in the letter.
TTC CEO Andy Byford echoes the same opinion—in May, he called on the City for more subsidies, saying the TTC can no longer rely on fare hikes and cannot carry out its plans without funding from the city.
For the past two years, the city has been contributing a third of the TTC’s $1.5-billion budget with $411 million. Some students at York are opposed to the idea of the increase. Shannon Holness, a fourth-year human rights and equity studies major, says the current fare is already unmanageable.
“I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve started walking to school,” says Holness. “That’s an hour walk every day from Jane [and] Finch to York University.”
Leslie Armstrong
Senior Staff
