What’s Missing from the TTC Privatization Debate

By: Marco Covi, TTCriders Recently Christopher Hume from the Toronto Star wrote an article about the TTC. Christopher Hume expresses that

>privatizing the TTC would make it more accessible, efficient and customer friendly because the private sector - unlike the politicians - presumably knows what people want. It’s true that transit debates have become political instead of customer-focused lately but in his article, Christopher doesn't provide any evidence that privatization would make things better.

We at TTCriders believe that people of influence such as Christopher Hume should be informing transit debates with facts. So as part of our mandate to educate transit users, we will attempt to fill in the blanks here.

Let’s add some context around Christopher Hume’s belief that transit in Toronto is too expensive, outdated and inefficient. Expensive: YES. Inefficient and outdated: SOMETIMES. But more importantly... WHY? In the 1990’s there was a recession so governments cut their subsidy to the TTC by 40%. But since the 90’s, ridership has grown by 42%. So our system is getting bigger and more people want to use TTC but the government doesn't want to fund it! Slow wait times and unpredictable service happens because of the TTC’s old systems which can only be upgrade little by little since the TTC is short of cash. Who pays to upkeep the system when the government doesn't? Us riders that’s who. In fact us riders pay more money per ride to help the TTC run its service than any other jurisdiction in North America. That’s not a fair deal !

Out of 29 major transit providers around the world, the TTC has some of the lowest administrative costs. The TTC is not perfect but it does a pretty good job considering the government doesn't want to use our tax dollars to help pay for it.

Here’s 5 reasons why privatizing the TTC would actually make service worse and more unaffordable for all of us:

London England has experimented with public-private partnerships or P3’s. Metronet, one of the private operators of the London subway went bankrupt and ended up costing taxpayers over a billion pounds. There is always a risk of bankruptcy in the private sector. Making the TTC private exposes all of us to financial risk.
In many cases, private transit companies that have control over planning try to serve the most number of people at the lowest cost. That may sound great but what it really means is that if privatized, the TTC would be tempted to get rid of many more routes that don’t have a lot of riders or reduce service outside of peak times. Don’t we want to make transit a public good accessible to everyone? What about seniors that rely on service outside of rush hours? Or nurses that rely on transit to come home from long night shifts? TTCriders believes that transit providers need to make decisions based on making transit as accessible and equitable as possible. When profits are the bottom line, it becomes easy to justify cutting your service.
In response to the Toronto Board of Trade's idea to privatize transit, the Globe and Mail wrote an article illustrating Auckland, New Zealand's private municipal transit system. In New Zealand, the government forced municipalities to sell public assets like transit to the private sector in order to try to save money. But what happened was that different private companies had their own zones and fare systems so customers couldn't transfer without paying multiple times. Privatizing the TTC can cost us riders much more money - and we are already having a tough time paying as it is.
In Auckland, travel times took much longer because bus routes were not integrated since there were many private operators competing with one another. Here we see that privatizing the TTC in this way can cost us riders a lot of time and frustration.
In Auckland again, service planning was done by private executives so performance standards were designed to maximize profits. This meant that drivers were not given overtime pay if they were stuck in traffic and took longer on their routes. Sometimes drivers were found breaking the speed-limit and skipping stops to meet their deadlines. Do you want a system that is designed by a bunch of private shareholders? Will they try to save you time and money?

For all of these reasons, TTCriders believes that privatizing the TTC is not the solution to fix our transit issues. But one thing that TTCriders agrees with Christopher Hume on is that politicians need to stop using transit as a political football. If they keep reducing funding and dictating what the TTC should focus on rather than letting us riders guide the process, the TTC will always struggle to provide adequate service to Torontonians.

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