If one looks at NA Transit Ridership, its basely in decline across the board with various systems seeing strong growth. Its been like that for the last few years with the cost of cheap gas being the cause of the decline.
Gas in a lot of parts of the US is about $2 gal or less, down from the high $3-$4. Even with the low gas price, people are still driving less than they did 5 -10 years ago.
Cost of using transit is at an point, its cheaper to drive than pay a transit fare while dealing with overcrowding and poor service.
People talk about seeing a TTC fare increase yearly to deal with the short fall of fund as a bad thing, but fail to look around at other systems what going on with their fare increase. Mississauga has had a $.10 fare increase yearly for 16 years in a roll with the odd year seeing more and one reason the model split hasn't change in those years at all. Still 11%.
I totally disagree with Tory vision that is following Ford vision as well good old Mike dumb vision.
TTC has to do the old switch an bait work around to try to maintain the State of Repair above the line while pushing vehicle maintain to a flat line or below for it to delivery the extra things Tory place before them not in their plan.
If people think taxes should be cut is the way to go, are they prepare to pay the full real cost on things they need daily?? Are they prepare to not have to pay for things they don't need or use at all and pay full cost of things they need daily or yearly?? If they are, they are in for a wakeup call as they will hit the floor when those bills arrive as they will be a lot higher than what they pay for everything today. In many cases, they will be unable to afford the place they live in, what they do as well a major shake up of their life style.
Tory needs to stand up and say he sorry about giving free rides to those below the age of 12 and will have to start charging them a fare again as its was the wrong thing to do in the first place. He needs to tell the car folks that lanes of traffic has to be removed for them since transit carries a lot more rider than they will every do. He needs to get council to provide the extra funding to allow TTC to comply with the ODA 2025 time frame to make TTC 100% accessibly before then, since they have the same right as us. It also means putting in 2 elevators, not the normal one so these accessibly riders can still use the system and not doing the farting around like they do today.
TTC Needs to prepare a budget showing everything it needs for it to run daily as well expanding and have council decide what should be put off for x time frame. Then they have only themselves to blame when things fall apart or having the riders doing more bitching than they do today.
At the end of the day, TTC will loose riders as its to costly to use in the first place since their revenue is below the cost of inflation as well trying to live. They will be going out less and walking a lot more if they can do the walking in the first place.
Queen Park needs to get its house in order and spend money a lot better and allowing transit system to buy from x company that can provide items cheaper than then the ones they are forced to buy from to protect seats or support X company. Those dollars saving will help systems to do more and expand a lot sooner
Its time all levels start using the right "Technology in the Right Place" than try winning votes for using the wrong one in the wrong place and costing an arm and leg for it that could be put to be use elsewhere.
