Disparishun
Active Member
If I remember right, that's 17% from taxpayers on commercial property, and 13% from taxpayers on residential property. So I think you mean 13%, not 30%.
Of course, since you are focussed on who pays taxes to subsidize the TTC, what you really mean is surely not that non-Torontonians should pay a higher fare -- but that non-owners of Toronto residential property should pay a higher fare.
As to how you enforce it, it's not too hard. Since you want to tie transit-subsidizing tax with lower TTC ridership, you simply jack up fares across the board, and then give a special discount to your cherished property tax payers (who, of course, may live in Woodbridge, Florida, wherever). I would suggest adding a mandatory bundled transferable Metropass into residential property taxes. Thinking about the ramifications is complicated, but I think it would work if you're going to go the my tax money! my system! you freeloader! stay on your side of the border and spend no money here! route.
Obviously disclaimer: I think this whole idea is silly. There are lots of reasons why it's silly. They include the fact that most of the money comes from the farebox, that residential property taxpayers should be happy to subsidize public transit as it increases the value of their property (in some cases very substantially), that commercial property taxpayers derive a very significant benefit from a transit system that allows them to shuttle employees in and out at no other cost to them, that the GO transit system for which Toronto pays nothing is set up to feed the TTC and increase its fares and certainly should be included in the silly who-pays-for-what calculus as long as one is calculating, that all TTC ridership has an economic multiplier effect for Toronto's economy but none greater than the ridership of people who do not use libraries, schools, or virtually any other social services except to travel in and buy lunch and shop and otherwise spend money in Toronto, that the subsidy is to the loss-making parts of the TTC and people getting dropped off at subways and paying fares to fill them are not loss-making (running empty buses is) so the TTC actually benefits financially from them, and on and on.
But, if you're going to float a silly idea, you might as well do it with a bit more accuracy. The 30% isn't all, or even half (if I remember right), residential property tax. Residential property tax correlates imperfectly with place of residence. And so forth.
EDIT: What I do not think is a silly idea, is as-the-crow-flies distance-based fares. They are relatively cost-based, they align incentives with good policy on the part of both the transit system (to align cost with distance) and its users (to bear the costs of not staying local), and they are much simpler than zones.
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