GTHA Transit Fare Integration

[Steve X]

To build on your point, unless serious and expensive changes are made, for instance, to the TTC, the poor won't even have that option--the 97 Yonge bus, as far as I know, only runs the full King-Finch route during peak hours. There is no bus that I know of running St Andrew-St George-Downsview, and I doubt one will exist to VMC. There is no bloor-danforth bus that I know of, nor is there one mirroring the SRT route. I think the 85 Sheppard does run above the subway route at all times, but it's the exception.

So, a) the poor won't even have the choice of taking a bus because as soon as a subway is built bus service is generally cancelled along that route, or b) lots of money will have to be spent on extra vehicles and operators to provide bus service along subway/LRT routes--not to mention that a large part of the benefit/advertised benefit of LRT and subway construction is taking a swarm of buses (looking at you, Eglinton) off the road, so I'm sure people will love having that congestion thrown back in. Hurontario, Hamilton, etc. would be in the same situation, and GO would have to start providing comprehensive train-mirroring service on every line to all stations at all times of day that train service runs--even on routes with bus service e.g. Barrie the buses generally don't run at the same time as the trains. Ditto for streetcars--are we going to permanently run full bus service overlapping every streetcar line in the city?

I'm all for zone-based fares as long as they're done granularly and in a well-integrated manner, but zone by type of transit is absurd to me. Why should a resident of the city be told that, sorry, we decided to build a subway here so you have no choice but to pay more suddenly? It's insane.

The TTC is simply not setup so one can take a bus instead of the subway. This isn't Vancouver or Hong Kong. That's for sure.
In Toronto, Calgary and even in the new Ottawa 2018 network, rapid transit becomes the system backbone in which one must take a bus to the station and take RT to downtown. There isn't much choices.

Agreeing with you, the biggest BS is flirting with the idea that building the Finch West LRT is not to improve priority neighbourhoods' transit needs but to eliminate their daily poor person bus service - 36 Finch West. Metrolinx got this entirely wrong and totally disaligns with the original transit city and the current transit plans. ML totally doesn't take social injustice in consideration as with the GO Transit system and expects everyone is rich enough to pay $5 for a fare.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

When you charge more for one service then another you are providing a poorer service to fewer people. You are also creating a 2-tiered transit system which also costs more to operate and is a far poorer use of infrastructure.
...
We don't accept two-tiered healthcare or education so why is it acceptable for another essential service, transit?

I really don't get the point. We're not talking about tiers. NYC has different fares for buses and subways, for example.

And regional rail - here, there and everywhere - costs more than local transit.

And YRT fares are higher than TTC fares. etc. etc.

so there are different price points throughout the system. Integration could/should create consistency. Your first sentence is really a very simplistic analysis as it does not have to be that way. And that's without getting into the fact we could/should be demanding things like low-income transit passes to offset increases, with or without integration.

When it comes to zones, we accept fare-by-distance for cars, boats, airplanes and even trains, so I'm not sure why subway should be exempt. It makes sense that if someone in Vaughan has a choice of taking a subway from Highway 7 to Union Station, it should cost less than the nearby GO to the same location. It also makes sense to me that taking the subway from Highway 7 to Sheppard should cost less than that. And certainly that it should not cost more than twice as much as taking the subway from Steeles to Sheppard.

I think the naievte simply comes from being used to the system we have now, and have had for a long time. It's when you've had to transfer between systems or some of the other ill effects of that system (or have used other systems) that you see how antiquated our system is, and how ill-equipped to deal with the reality of evolving travel and growth patterns.

I don't at all dismiss social equity concerns but I also don't accept that fare integration makes them harder to address.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Everyone does it better than us: funding governance, fares. All connected. We're behind on all 3. In all cases, largely because of TTC being the biggest, most important agency, and the one with the least interest in ceding an inch to help riders.

Help whose riders? You made it sound as if these schemes are neutral across the board, with no negative impact to existing riders. And let's not pretend the blame only falls onto the TTC - where is the regional leadership when it comes to revenue? I don't see Metrolinx willing to assume that financial risk or implement any revenue tools on their own.

Keeping double fares and mutiple transit agencies is a great way to make sure transit is never the dominant mode for "reverse commutes." Is that our long-term goal?

Let's not pretend for one second that farebox is the only challenge facing reverse commuters - or in fact the dominant problem facing commuters in general. I've said it before - you can't even ensure it is the dominant mode within the same transit jurisdiction - let's not get ahead of ourselves and think that zone fares will change that, given the lower cross-boundary ridership in general. Besides, if you are going to travel that far to reverse commute, you will likely be paying just as much through a zone-based system anyways. In other words, the only cases where such a scheme would have significant financial impact is relatively short cross-border trips, not long distance commutes.

No - that's a very simplistic way to read "overall fairness," or, to use a fancier term, equity. It's a far more nuanced discussion but the short version is every system has pros and cons and Toronto's flat fare is no different. clearly one thing it does do is penalize cross-border riders and there are ever more and more of those because outside Toronto is where most of the population growth is. Equity isn't just about which system handles the most riders (except in terms of TTC's internal finances), it's about helping riders get from A to B in the most efficient, least expensive way. You don't want a system that encourages people to (for example) drive to the subway when a bus runs right by their house, but that's what we have now.

If you are going to bring out the term "equity", you better be aware of the socioeconomic status of the ridership of the TTC - particularly those in the outlying suburbs and their predominant mode and destination. If you are proposing a solution that basically increases fare for the majority of them, you already failed the equity test. As to your hypothetical example - just what is the likely increase in transit usage?

Ultimately I agree. There should be a regional agency and a regional tax, which could take any one of a number of forms. I think a 'subsidy pot' (as I just named it) should be part of any integration plan.

But if your goal (as Metrolinx's explicitly is) is to create a seamless regional network, and if we want to encourage the increasing number of suburbanites to take transit and if we want to draw "reverse commutes" out of cars....the current system doesn't cut it. We've outgrown it.

My argument is that you haven't demonstrated the amount of impact - fiscal, ridership, equity - a move to a finer grained zone system will create - with no illusion that we are currently operating a zoned system - just one with boundaries that doesn't necessarily strike one's fancy.

AoD

 

[facepalming_brooklynite]

NYC has different fares for buses and subways

That's a bit misleading. Yes, there are higher fares for Express Buses (= long-haul commuter buses), but regular buses have the same fare as the subway:
http://web.mta.info/nyct/fare/FaresatAGlance.htm

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

When it comes to zones, we accept fare-by-distance for cars, boats, airplanes and even trains, so I'm not sure why subway should be exempt. It makes sense that if someone in Vaughan has a choice of taking a subway from Highway 7 to Union Station, it should cost less than the nearby GO to the same location. It also makes sense to me that taking the subway from Highway 7 to Sheppard should cost less than that. And certainly that it should not cost more than twice as much as taking the subway from Steeles to Sheppard.

Why should someone taking the subway to Union Station cost less than GO - especially if there is capacity issues with the former, exactly? That's like one of the worst ways of dealing with oversubscribed demand if there is slack on the other side. Besides, plenty of other systems (having just been to Barcelona and Madrid - I can say both of those) have abrupt jumps in fares (double) across zones as well - it didn't harm the issue of integration or usage. Let's not confound the challenges of short-distance cross zone/boundary travel with long-distance commutes.

I think the naievte simply comes from being used to the system we have now, and have had for a long time. It's when you've had to transfer between systems or some of the other ill effects of that system (or have used other systems) that you see how antiquated our system is, and how ill-equipped to deal with the reality of evolving travel and growth patterns.

The fare system is actually one of the least antiquated aspect of the transit system (not fare payment system per se, but I can tell you for one that Barcelona doesn't even have Smart card and operates on magnetic strip - and Madrid is still on a mixed Smart card/magnetic strip system; neither are what I would call laggard in service).

I don't at all dismiss social equity concerns but I also don't accept that fare integration makes them harder to address.

You've just added a whole bundle of complexity that falls outside the realm of the transit system - income/transit supplement, etc - to address. That's almost a surefire way of ensuring it won't get done if you can't even deal with subsidizing short cross-border trips that costs relatively little through some sort of regional mechanism.

AoD

 

[muller877]

Agreed. There's zero evidence that the number of 905->416 riders is equivalent to the number of 416->905 riders.

There's also zero evidence that whatever change occurs would be revenue neutral - every government is looking for a way to increase revenues.

but there is also zero evidence against it. So which one is correct?

Here are stat's that are available:
- There are an equal number of people that commute to work in and out of Toronto
- 1.4M residents are in the labour force of which 9% are unemployed (1.27M commute daily)
- 35% of these use transit (0.5M). 1M trips per day.
So 60% of TTC customers are using it for work.

250,000 Go transit users per day. Majority (assume 80%...0.2M) use it for work in Toronto. Ontario subsidizes the financial district by 0.4M rides per year.

And remember, there are 2 groups of taxpayers. Commercial and residential. Commercial makes up 36% of the tax base of Toronto and residential makes up 49%. TTC is here to serve not just the residents but all taxpayers which includes the office workers coming into Toronto. Toronto is the ONLY city in Ontario that receives a direct subsidy for the commercial workers. Toronto receives this via free GO Transit.

Any other city would love this....not having to pay for roads or transit to get office workers to work but enjoying the commercial tax base (and the logical rationale for downloading it in the '90's so the residential and commercial tax base should be paying for this transit). Why does London or Kitchener not get a similar annual subsidy?

So why does the TTC cry about this? They shouldn't. But it is to distract from the horrible management of the system and to make up excuses.

The politicians are in constant fear of change. But change in inevitable (and a good thing). They should get to work and stop whining like a 2 year old.

 

[zenmeister]

Why should someone taking the subway to Union Station cost less than GO - especially if there is capacity issues with the former, exactly? That's like one of the worst ways of dealing with oversubscribed demand if there is slack on the other side. Besides, plenty of other systems (having just been to Barcelona and Madrid - I can say both of those) have abrupt jumps in fares (double) across zones as well - it didn't harm the issue of integration or usage. Let's not confound the challenges of short-distance cross zone/boundary travel with long-distance commutes.
AoD

Do you believe that lowering the cost of GO will not lead to capacity issues on GO trains and at Union?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

That's a bit misleading. Yes, there are higher fares for Express Buses (= long-haul commuter buses), but regular buses have the same fare as the subway:
http://web.mta.info/nyct/fare/FaresatAGlance.htm

Is the transfer between busses and subways free?

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The TTC is simply not setup so one can take a bus instead of the subway. This isn't Vancouver or Hong Kong. That's for sure.
In Toronto, Calgary and even in the new Ottawa 2018 network, rapid transit becomes the system backbone in which one must take a bus to the station and take RT to downtown. There isn't much choices.

Agreeing with you, the biggest BS is flirting with the idea that building the Finch West LRT is not to improve priority neighbourhoods' transit needs but to eliminate their daily poor person bus service - 36 Finch West. Metrolinx got this entirely wrong and totally disaligns with the original transit city and the current transit plans. ML totally doesn't take social injustice in consideration as with the GO Transit system and expects everyone is rich enough to pay $5 for a fare.

The TTC has outright rejected any discussion of fare-by-mode. The costs of retrofitting the station designs to work with this would be enormous. The subway stations were absolutely not in any way designed to accommodate fare by mode.

Also the network designs as a whole isn't suited for fare by mode. We've designed all our surface routes to feed into rapid transit. It would take a redesign of surface routes and service enhancements to get this to work.

 

[muller877]

Is the transfer between busses and subways free?

with a Metrocard...it's a free transfer between a bus and subway

 

[TheTigerMaster]

with a Metrocard...it's a free transfer between a bus and subway

So New York uses essentially the same fare system as the TTC, except with no free transfers with cash payments?

 

[ShonTron]

So New York uses essentially the same fare system as the TTC, except with no free transfers with cash payments?

Pretty much. Flat-fare across the city, excepted and your Metrocard transfer good for two hours. The MTA also operates a lot of premium coach services (somewhat equivalent to the 140-series double fare routes) that require an additional fare.

 

[Forgotten]

Toronto receives this via free GO Transit.

I'm fairly sure government money exchanges hands in addition to the higher disproportional fees Toronto users have to pay. If that ain't a direct fee I don't know what is.

 

[nfitz]

with a Metrocard...it's a free transfer between a bus and subway

Depends which subway. No free transfers from the subway line across the Hudson River, even though you can use your Metrocard on it, and only travel between stops in Manhattan.

And no transfers from the MTA suburban trains (like GO Trains), even though they are run by the same agency as many of the buses and subways.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Depends which subway. No free transfers from the subway line across the Hudson River, even though you can use your Metrocard on it, and only travel between stops in Manhattan.

So that's still quite similar to what we have here in Toronto. Steeles Avenue would be our Hudson River in this case.