TTC users need a crusader to battle cuts
By Royson James
So much for customer loyalty.
The city’s most faithful customers — the beleaguered brigade of transit captives — are getting it in the teeth again. Bus and streetcar service on the most popular routes is being cut back to achieve a confounding funding target established by a befuddling mayor.
Meanwhile, crime is down, and falling by the month. Yet Mayor Rob Ford responds by boosting the police budget.
Transit ridership rises to an all-time high, with projections of more than 500 million rides in 2012. Instead of offering transit users a bonus — like better service, or a fare-free day — Ford shows them the back of the hand.
He cuts $46 million in transit subsidies, creating a funding crisis that penalizes the very transit rider he should support.
Faced with a demand to cut costs 10 per cent, Toronto police, the most pampered department in the city, rose up in righteous indignation. Chief Bill Blair battled politicians at every turn to preserve every penny of his near billion-dollar behemoth of a budget. And won.
Faced with the same demand, the gentlemanly mandarins at the TTC dutifully go about the task and chop, chop, chop. And a constituency that is millions strong but seemingly powerless and defenceless sleepwalks towards disaster.
How do you feel today, you wretches along Finch Avenue West? You cram the buses. You wait and wait and wait and then wait some more when a bus comes and is too full to take a single passenger. And now transit officials say you must wait longer. And endure more crowded buses once on board. Do you not count in this city?
Who is fighting for you?
This is not to blame TTC chief general manager Gary Webster and his staff — they are terrific soldiers toiling on the front lines, moving more than a million rides a day. But TTC customers need an advocate, a crusader, someone or some group willing to Occupy and protest and march and raise hell until the average commuter in this city region is no longer taken for granted.
Across the border in York Region, a transit strike continues into its fifth week. Nobody gives a rat’s ass.
In Toronto, successive city hall regimes jerk the transit system this way and that, lurching from ridership boosting strategies to a clear path towards ridership erosion.
David Miller introduced the ridership growth strategy. Commuters responded by packing the buses. Ford shows up, yanks the money and sends the buses screeching to a halt, riders toppling over each other, trying to save one threatened route after another.
Is this a way to treat commuters, many of them forced to take transit because they don’t have a car? If you can get away with it, yes.
“Are we proud of it, no,†says Mitch Stambler of the TTC. “It’s part of corporate requirement to meet budget target. We’re doing what we have to do to meet the city’s target.â€
The announced service cuts will save $15 million. Webster recommended a 10-cent fare hike for the 2011 budget, pointing out that the system needed the $30 million in generated revenue. Ford rejected it. Now, months later, he wants to cut service along well-travelled routes like Queen, King, Dufferin, Don Mills et al, to save $15 million.
It’s consistent with his decision to abolish the vehicle registration tax that generated some $60 million a year — even as he cries poor and cuts service.
And this passes for proper management of our city.
Everywhere, transit is being reduced and made less attractive. So, here’s a future for the once tent-dwelling “Occupy†crowd. Adopt transit riders and train them.
