What's in the 2025 TTC Operating Budget?

Highlights 

• A fare freeze. This investment matters because fares have risen faster than inflation over the past 30 years. 
• 10 outreach workers on the downtown streetcar network, focusing on overnights (this will be funded through the City Budget and the Toronto Shelter and Support Services).
• Targeted station improvements and transit priority investments to improve the condition of 6 subway stations, including piloting a public address system upgrade.
• Investments in repairing the TTC subway system, including preventative maintenance of subway work cars and reducing the state of good repair backlog. 
• Investments in TTC service, including:
  • 6-minute streetcar service on Dundas, Bathurst, and St. Clair.
  • Bringing back service levels on the subway, with most periods of Line 1 and Line 2 service operating every 5 minutes or better, with 6-minute or better service on Line 4. 
  • More frequent service on crowded bus routes in midday, evening and weekend periods.
  • The TTC had more ambitious plans for service improvements in 2025, but the full 5-Year Service Plan is not funded. 
  • A pilot program on the 10 most unreliable routes to keep buses and/or streetcars evenly spaced with consistent wait times.
• The funded portion of the TTC's 10-Year Capital Plan has increased from 26% to 31%.

What's missing?

• The TTC could go further for affordability by bringing in fare capping. The TTC Board approved the idea in 2022, but has never brought back a report on costs and options. 
• Will the new investments in the TTC budget for preventative maintenance and the state of good repair be enough to fix all slow zones on the subway network? 
• The TTC should be honest about how riders experience service by measuring kilometres (vehicle kilometres travelled) or vehicle frequency (headways), not service hours. A % of service hours in the 2025 budget have been added to "account for congestion," which means that some of the hours are being wasted in traffic and not delivering noticeable improvements. 
• The TTC is losing up to $1.2 million every week in lost fare revenue to private transportation companies like Uber and Lyft, which also contribute to congestion, but Toronto and the TTC does not have a plan to address mode shift to ridehailing. 
• We are calling for the TTC Budget Committee to be reinstated so there are serious conversations about what it would take to bring back excellent service and enough time for Board members and the public to review the budget before it is rubber-stamped. The TTC Board requested a report on bringing back the budget committee, but the report never happened.  
• The TTC Board voted in 2024 to cancel free public Wi-Fi on the subway system, which would cost $11 million in capital upgrades and $1 million per year to operate. TTCriders and ACORN Toronto are calling for wi-fi to be restored. 

How can we pay for more frequent transit service? 

• A Commercial Parking Levy could generate gross revenues between $100 million to $150 million annually, according to a City of Toronto report from February 2024.
• The TTC budget warns that forecasted operating budget pressures of $120.0 million in 2026 and $239.4 million in 2027 will need federal and provincial operations funding: “A new, sustainable operating funding model will be essential to prevent the erosion of transit service before March 31, 2027 when the Ontario-Toronto New Deal Agreement is set to expire.”
  
• Past city budgets have shielded homeowners from property tax increases above inflation, while transit fares rose 1.8 times the rate of inflation over the past 30 years. Toronto property taxes have been kept artificially low by raising fares to balance the budget. 

Get involved! 

Members of the public can speak directly to City Councillors during budget hearings on January 21 and 22 at locations across Toronto. Your voice is needed to convince Councillors to invest in fixing subway slow zones, more frequent service, and bringing in fare capping. 

RSVP to speak up for transit at a Budget Hearing!

RSVP: January 21 + 22

TTCriders will follow up with you to share more information and tips for speaking to Councillors. 

You can also check out these free workshops about how the City Budget process works: 

Deputation Training for City of Toronto 2025 Budget, hosted by Social Planning Toronto

Monday, January 20, 2025 at 6:30 PM

RSVP: SPT training 

How to Speak at Budget Consultations, hosted by Progress Toronto

Thursday, January 16, 2025 at 6:00 PM

RSVP: ProgressTO training 

More details 

Link to 2025 TTC Operating Budget, Capital Budget and Plan and 15-Year Capital Investment Plan, and Real Estate Investment Plan Update: https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Documents/Home/Public-Meetings/Board/2025/January-10/1Recommended2025TTCOperatingBudget20252034-CapitalBudgetandPlan15YearCIPandREIPUpdate.pdf

Visit SteveMunro.ca for more in-depth analysis. 

Service

Key service investments in the 2025 TTC budget: 

• The budget invests $6.5 million in "service improvements to increase reliability."
• The budget invests in a 5.8% increase in service hours (9.6 million hours), broken down as follows:
  • 1.7%: “interim bus service along subway stations until they are accessible and accounting for congestion and ridership growth.”
  • 2.2%: to start returning to service standards (evening, weekend, daytime service on all modes)
  • 1.9%: Opening Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRT
  
• The budget invests in more frequent service on streetcars and subways, including:
  • 6-minute streetcar service on Dundas, Bathurst, and St. Clair.
  • More frequent service on the subway during midday, night, and weekend times, with most periods of Line 1 and Line 2 service operating every 5 minutes or better, and 6-minute or better service on Line 4. 
• “An additional $0.3 million and four positions are recommended to improve Transit Control response times to incidents and traffic congestion, ensuring the system moves reliably for TTC riders.”
• Establishes "pilot programs to reduce bunching and gapping on 10 of the most problematic routes with enhanced on-street presence" within existing resources, which means no new funding or staff positions have been allocated. 
• The budget funds some restoration of service standards that were cut in 2023, which resulted in more crowded transit and longer waits during the midday, nights and weekends. This is an accessibility issue as crowding means less room for users with wheelchairs or other mobility devices; some restoration of service standards is a good step, but a full restoration is not fully funded.

The TTC's 5-Year Service Plan has more ambitious plans to restore service, but is not fully funded in the TTC’s 2025 budget. 

• The TTC’s 5-Year Service Plan would “increase ridership from 422 million annual customer trips in 2024 to 479 million annual customer trips by 2028.”
  
• This target falls far short of pre-pandemic 2019 ridership, when the TTC saw 525 million trips.
  
• Some measures in the 5-Year Service Plan have been accelerated, such as the 6-minute streetcar service, while others have not been funded or are only partially funded in 2025.

Table: Service improvements funded in 2025 TTC Budget vs. Planned improvements in 5-Year Service Plan

Table: 5-Year Service Plan actions requiring operating funding 

How does service today compare to 5 years ago?

• The 2025 TTC budget document claims that "service levels are higher than pre-pandemic," but analysis by Steve Munro shows that this false. 
• The 2025 and 2024 TTC budgets admit that some of the increased service hours have been added to address traffic congestion; these additional hours do not translate into more frequent service experienced by riders.
  
• The TTC should be honest in its budget about how riders experience service by measuring frequency (headways) or Vehicle-Kilometres-Travelled, rather than service hours.

Subway slow zones

The TTC has implemented restricted speed zones on the subway network where defects have been identified:

• Slow zones add an extra two minutes of travel time per zone, which adds up fast for riders on the Yonge-University line.
• The TTC should be aiming for zero slow zones on the subway.
• Cities such as Boston have completely eliminated slow zones from their subway network.
• A growing number of fluid leaks from faulty subway workcars in 2024 have caused subway shutdowns and affected the TTC's ability to repair slow zones as quickly as possible. 
• Slow zones should not be normalized: Historically, Toronto did not have issues with slow zones like we do today.
• It is not clear if the budget will be enough to bring slow zones down to zero.

The 2025 budget makes investments in maintaining the subway system, including:

• "$1.0 million and 12 positions to enhance workcar and electrical preventative maintenance, in response to increased workcar usage for capital work to meet maintenance standards required to improve service reliability."
• This will help make workcars available for repairs. 
• "$8.0 million in increased asset management and maintenance costs... including $3 million in additional funding to support maintenance needs with a focus on preventative maintenance programs for escalator step and chain replacements and easy access door repairs, as well as for increased bus and rail vehicle maintenance."

Station improvements

The 2025 budget invests in:

• "$0.95 million in one-time funding to undertake a station management and cleanliness pilot program at six key locations (Scarborough Town Centre, Kennedy, Dundas, Finch, Spadina, Lansdowne)," which will inform future funding for a comprehensive station management and cleanliness program. 
• Piloting a public address system upgrade
• Install red paint treatment on existing city roads, intersections and TTC stations to improve transit priority.

Fares

• The budget states that “ridership recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has now plateaued.” 
  
• TTC fares have risen 1.8 times the rate of inflation over the last 30 years (click here to view fares vs. inflation graphic).
• The TTC budget invests $2.6 million to fund 69 new positions in a "Fare Compliance Strategy": 56 fare inspection staff
  will be deployed in the bus network, with 10 Special Constables and 3 program staff to monitor and manage the program. The TTC states that this "is expected to generate $12 million in recovered fare revenue in 2025."
• In contrast, in fall 2024 the TTC lost up to $1.2 million every week in lost fare revenue to private transportation companies like Uber and Lyft, according to calculations based on the "The Transportation Impacts of Vehicle-for-Hire in the City of Toronto" report. 
  
  

Wheel-Trans

• The budget will increase Wheel Trans service "to deliver an estimated 4 million rides in 2025, accounting for a 12% increase in new registrants due to changing demographics."
• This is positive; TTCriders has been campaigning to protect door-to-door Wheel-Trans service. Our analysis of TTC data shows that residents in Malvern, Lawrence Heights, and Rexdale would be most impacted by planned restrictions to door-to-door Wheel-Trans service.

Capital plan

• The funded portion of the TTC's 10-Year Capital Plan has increased from 26% to 31%.
• The budget reduces the TTC’s State-of-Good-Repair funding backlog "by almost 50% from $8.243 billion by 2033 to a projected $4.344 billion for the current 10-year period ending in 2034."

New investments in Capital Investment Plan include:  

• "Critical subway systems infrastructure (Signals, Electrical, Communication) and escalator/elevator overhaul/replacement programs, with $368 million in additional funding provided;"
• "A new Major Control Centre to support long-term TTC Transit Control, ITS Data Centre requirements and integration with provincial expansion program, by adding $467 million to fully fund the current estimated design/construction costs; as well as;"
• "Targeted station/transit priority investments of $15 million over 2025 and 2026 to improve the condition; aesthetics; to pilot a public address system upgrade and station lighting LED retrofit at six key stations and install red paint treatment on existing city roads, intersections and TTC stations to improve transit priority and safety and support fare compliance at station entrances."

Where the money comes from

• The operating subsidy per ride has risen from $1.18 in 2019 to $2.62 in 2024.

The City of Toronto pays for nearly two-thirds of the capital plan, despite the importance of the TTC for Ontario and Canada's economy. 

More capital funding is available to invest due to the Gardiner/DVP upload ($500 million), as well as intergovernmental funding partnerships, the City Council-approved extension of the City Building Fund, and "increased City debt funding given TTC’s capital spending performance."