By James Bow
Earlier this week, the Region of Waterloo approved a plan to increase Grand River Transit fares by nine per cent this year. The goal is to raise the fare each year, increasing the system’s farebox recovery ratio. Instead of recovering 38 per cent of its costs from riders’ fares as it does now, fares would eventually cover roughly half of the GRT’s costs.
Understandably, riders are concerned. An additional 25 cents may not sound like a burden, but for those counting their pennies, that is at least an additional $130 per year to pay.
Personally, while I understand the concerns people have about rising fares, I’m not opposed to the concept. To the region’s credit, we’ve embarked on a substantial expansion of our transit network, such that the automobile is less of a necessity in living here. Increasing the farebox recovery ratio to the provincial average will ensure that the gains we’ve made are fiscally sustainable.
Others have taken the opposite stance, though. A number of commentators are angry that their taxes are going to public transit at all. Why support a money-losing venture that they themselves don’t use? If transit is a valuable service, why can’t it support itself?
In my opinion, this is a wrong-headed stance that hurts everyone in the region, drivers and transit users alike. It’s important to note there is not a single transit agency in North America that makes a profit from its operations. The one that comes the closest is GO Transit, which makes back 80 per cent of its costs from the farebox. The Toronto Transit Commission used to hold the continental record with 82 per cent, but increased subsidies have allowed them to reduce that ratio to around 75 per cent. New York City’s transit agency only recovers 62 per cent of its costs from fares.
Can you imagine New York or Toronto without their subways?
It’s important to note that a high farebox recovery ratio isn’t necessarily a thing to boast about. Theoretically, it means the money the riders are paying is being efficiently used, but in practise this is accomplished by running fewer buses.
Riders pay more for more crowded vehicles that arrive less frequently. When the TTC reached a farebox recovery ratio of 82 per cent, they lost 100 million riders a year. Now that the TTC’s farebox recovery ratio is down to 75 per cent, more than half-a-billion riders are riding.
The mistake is assuming that public transit and the automobile are two separate interests competing for limited tax dollars. The fact is, they’re both important aspects of the wider picture: public mobility. GO Transit has never made a profit in its 45-year history, but that’s not the point. What it has done is provided a transit option for more than 217,000 riders on an average weekday. The overwhelming majority of these people are car owners. A conservative estimate is that thanks to GO Transit, 75,000 cars have been removed from roads in the Greater Toronto Area every weekday.
This fact alone has saved Ontario taxpayers billions of dollars in expressways we didn’t need to build and road work we didn’t need to undertake, and the commute for drivers who are still on the road is quicker than it would have been if GO Transit didn’t exist.
Finding the correct farebox recovery ratio for Grand River Transit will be a difficult balance to achieve, and I would like to see more of the region’s reasons justifying this increased burden. But a properly funded public transit system is a boon to this city. It is an important element keeping Waterloo Region livable.
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James Bow is a writer and a father of two in Kitchener.
You can read more about him online at bowjamesbow.ca or follow him on Twitter at @jamesbow.
