As Kim Campbell was famously misquoted as saying, elections are no time to talk about serious issues. The quip has evolved from misprint to truism. Politicians have become ever more likely to bid for votes with shiny distractions, and sound-bite solutions to heavyweight problems.
Which brings us to the Ontario provincial election, and the opening pitch from the third-place Liberal Party: buck-a-ride.
Voting day is less than a month away, which presents two major challenges for the Liberals. Many people don’t know there’s an election; most have no idea who the Liberal leader is. (Answer: Steven Del Duca.) The Grits have to get noticed, and they haven’t much time.
So the party opened this week with buck-a-ride. Fares on each of the province’s municipal transit systems, plus GO Transit and Ontario Northland, would be cut to $1, until 2024.
It may be good marketing – a tight phrase, a catchy slogan, plus mockery of “buck-a-beer,” one of Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford’s memorable gimmicks from the last election. (Which he never delivered on).
Thing is, it’s a flawed policy. And its flaw – money sent to the wrong destination, for political reasons – is what increasingly afflicts public transit in Ontario. When provincial politicians are driving the bus, the terminus is always Queen’s Park.
Buck-a-ride has one thing going for it: The PC plan is worse.
Mr. Ford is writing cheques to drivers. He recently made vehicle license renewals free, which will save most drivers $120 and cost Ontario more than $1-billion a year. He also refunded all renewal fees paid since March of 2020, removed tolls from highways 412 and 418, and if re-elected will spend umpteen billion dollars – exact figures pending – on two new highways, the 413 and the Bradford Bypass.
The PCs have branded themselves as the party of the car. The Liberals want to brand themselves as the opposite.
The Liberals say their loonie-ride plan will cost just $710-million this year, and $1.1-billion next year. The numbers look lowballed, based on ridership at the Toronto Transit Commission, which is (by far) the province’s busiest. Still, a plan to subsidize mass transit is, all else equal, better than a plan to subsidize roads and cars.
But the Liberal scheme has three big defects.
The first is that the proposed subsidy is unequal, illogical and wasteful. It’s a policy derived from a sound bite, not the other way around.
A TTC rider pays a fare of $3.25, which under the Liberal plan would drop to $1. But someone commuting by GO train from Oshawa to downtown Toronto – around 50 kilometres – would also pay $1. The current (already highly subsidized) fare is $12.25. Under the Liberal plan, they can expect to save nearly $4,000 a year, paid for by taxpayers.
The longer the distance, the bigger the subsidy. Chopping the GO fare from Kitchener to Toronto to $1, from $19.40, would give a regular commuter a subsidy of more than $6,000 a year. A commuter from Niagara Falls would get an annual subsidy of more than $7,000.
Which brings us to the second problem. This is a plan to send the biggest subsidies to the most costly routes. This is becoming a pattern, and entirely the wrong one, when it comes to Greater Toronto Area transit.
Back in the 1960s, the TTC was a model transit agency, able to finance operations from fares. That was a very long time ago. The TTC still receives a lower per-passenger subsidy than any major transit agency in North America, but decades of politicians forcing it to build and run high-priced, low-ridership lines to low-density neighbourhoods has raised costs more than revenues.
And several projects in the works – notably the Scarborough Subway and the tunnelled Eglinton West LRT, both promising higher costs and fewer riders than the alternatives – will only make things worse.
The Liberal plan is a bit like that. Too many taxpayer dollars subsidizing the most expensive commutes.
Final problem: If we want more people to use transit, what agencies like the TTC need most is more operating funding, to deliver faster and more frequent service.
Loonie-ride isn’t about that. It subsidizes riders, not transit. That’s better than subsidizing drivers, but compared to the best transit policy, it feels like one more detour.
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