Mayor Tory, increasing the TTC budget through fare hikes is not investing in transit

Yesterday, John Tory held a press conference, allegedly to announce that his administration is investing in the TTC. Mayor Tory proclaimed that "the [TTC] budget, as proposed, will represent a $50 million increase over the budget of last year."

We've been watching the TTC 2016 operating budget for months, hoping that a modest request to improve services would be approved. We hadn't heard of any new funds and we wanted to applaud the Mayor's announcement -- until we traced back his "investment" to last January's fare hike.

The increase that the Mayor talked about yesterday was funded mostly by this year’s increase in cash and token fares. For the second year in a row, we the riders have invested in the TTC and Mayor John Tory has claimed the credit.

To make things worse, when the TTC Board approved the fare hike last year, we were told that the extra money would be used to improve TTC services. When the budget reached Mayor Tory's Budget Committee, the extra money for bus and streetcar reliability improvements was cut. Mayor Tory called these services a "wish list". As a result, in 2016, TTC riders will pay higher fees and receive no new transit investments [1].

Mayor Tory, we're not buying your misdirections and political spin. You have not invested in the TTC, transit riders or the City of Toronto.

Notes:

[1] For a more detailed explanation of how the costs breakdown in 2016, see Steve Munro's post here.

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