I think a commitment to accessibility ends up benefitting everybody, though. Look at the stop announcements/signs on the buses & streetcars. They added them for accessibility reasons, but they're a great extra for all riders.
But it'd be nice if the odd TTC driver actually called out the stops and tried to look like they enjoy their job. I'd love to be a TTC driver for a day and make people actually feel welcome in the system; calling out each stop on my own, making smalltalk with passengers, smiling, giving directions.
Actually, one of my role models is (hilariously enough) an unnamed Vancouver bus driver. If I could meet him again or get his msn or something it'd definitely be fulfilling. On a vacation to Vancouver, me and my family got on the bus with only dollar bills (
somebody obviously expecting to get change.) He notified us that there wasn't any change machine, and that we could only pay in coins.
But instead of kicking us off the bus, he asked us where we were going. "Stanley Park" we replied.
"Okay, well you go have a good time, get a snack while you're there and come back with a bunch of change." He said, and let us on the bus, even giving us a transfer while he was at it.
Came back to the Stanley Park bus loop, and sure enough he was waiting there for us. I was about to pay a double fare back for the trip to the park and he said "forget about it." He turned off the automatic stop announcements after it got a stop wrong, and did the rest of the trip himself. He was truly dedicated to his job and obviously cared for the customers not just as people who put money in the fare box but as people as well. Now, I try to do all my work just as he does.
It's not really fair to see things as a zero-sum game in this case. There wouldn't be more service if there were less accessibility.
Actually, with this talk of low-floor busses having lower capacity, wouldn't they need to run more busses so more passengers could be carried..?
EDIT: And it's actually a human rights issue for all this accessibility. I'm pretty sure it's international, as I know that New York's doing it, and other provinces have their own versions of accessibility laws that've been beefed up considerably over the past decade or so. So really, it's illegal for the TTC to
not be providing this service, and the Province very well could get into some serious trouble if they change laws so the TTC doesn't have to run a fully accessible system.