That’s not what I said. I said the fare structure shouldn’t be designed to aggravate poverty, not that it should be designed to relieve it. There’s a big difference between the two.
Two sides of the same coin. Define for me how you would argue whether a fare change scheme does or does not "aggravate poverty"?
Connectivity doesn’t count for much when you can’t afford to use it in the first place.
We can have a transit system that requires very little capital investment if all we had were buses. Fares could be cheaper too. I doubt people would be happy with the result.
There's a reason people are willing to pay much higher fares, relative to income, in other parts of the world. And that's because they get a transit system that is truly a replacement for the car. That should be the goal here. Not keeping fares low for some amorphous goal of not designing to "aggravate poverty".
Ask anybody (including the poor) in say London or Paris or Munich or Tokyo, if they'd love our fares, if they came with our transit system.
I think it's wholly reasonable to ask people who use the transit system more, to pay more. If you're travelling further on the transit system, why should you not pay more? Heck, it would actually provide some funds for all the suburban subway and LRT extensions that suburban residents want. The only reason I've argued for flat fare on buses and streetcars and LRT, is because there's no practical way of doing tap on/tap off. For the subway? We should absolutely do this.
And only the province is placed to do this. Because, let's face it, you will never see a municipal politician running on something like this. Heck, I find it perverse that downtown councillors don't bring this up, when their residents would benefit a ton from the introduction of zone or fare by distance schemes.
And let’s not forget that your solution to the affordability problem seems to be some kind of tax credit, fare reduction, or beurocracy of similar nature.
I never suggested a tax cut. Where did you get that?
I suggested either discounted pass (implemented on Presto) or simply discounted fares (like we have for seniors and students), or simply higher welfare payments to help the poor. If a discounted pass on Metro is "bureaucracy" than we should give up talking about any further transit discussion. Implementing a fare policy in software should be basic for a transit system.
