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It’s always easy to complain about rising prices. In some cases, the grumbling is even justified.
Take OC Transpo fares. They are already among the highest in the country and are set to rise an average of 2.5 per cent if the city’s current draft budget is passed. That means a basic adult monthly pass would rise to $103. 25 (an annual increase of $30), compared to a comparable pass for $99 in Calgary, $82 in Montreal and $91 in Vancouver for a so-called “zone 1″ pass.
Are these fare increases, well, fair increases?
Depends how you look at it. Ottawa is a sprawling city — fourth largest in Canada by population, but far larger than Calgary, Montreal, Vancouver or the city of Toronto in geographic area. That means providing transit services for our spread-out population is expensive, especially with buses.
And while constructing rail-based transit is expensive (you may have heard something about the $2.1-billion we’re spending on a 12.5-kilometre light-rail system now under construction), subway and light-rail systems are cheaper to operate than buses. That may go a piece toward explaining why Calgary and Montreal’s fares are lower than Ottawa’s.
On the other hand, the draft budget released this week was supposed based on four pillars, including that Ottawa be a “sustainable city.” So do the OC Transpo fare increases encourage sustainability?
Not for everyone, argues Coun. Jeff Leiper.
Consider the cash fare. The city’s policy is to reward frequent use, so a single cash fare is, by design, not the most economical way to go. It’s $3.45, with a proposed increase of 10 cents for 2015. Yet it’s often the city’s poorest who use actual loose change to pay for bus ride, says Leiper.
“It strikes me that many of the biggest hikes are to the fare classes used by some of the most vulnerable users,” he says. “Cash fare increases are particularly worrisome. I’ll be asking staff to see how we can distribute some of the increases to other classes.”
While there may be some tinkering with the proposed fares during this year’s budget process, there likely won’t be many major changes to the fare structure. After all, even the most progressive members on council are cognizant that they were elected on a mandate to keep the tax increase at two per cent — or at least close to it.
But council should engage in a much larger discussion about the city’s policy that stipulates that transit fares account for 55 per cent of the system’s operating costs (excluding ParaTranspo). If the 2015 proposed increases are approved, for example, the new fares are expected to provide $187.2 million, or 53 per cent of operating costs.
That policy was set was back in 2005. If we’re now more determined to become a city where people get out of their cars and on to transit, it’s high time to revisit it.
There are many reasons why people decide to drive instead of take transit, and the fare is only one factor in a host of calculations that include cost (of gas, of parking) and convenience. (For low-income folks, transit isn’t a question of affordability calculations, it’s a question of necessity.)
So if during the frigid morning rush hour, you watch two or three packed buses pass you by in Orléans or Kanata, or a late bus makes you miss your connection, then a lower fare might not convince you to stick with transit. But more buses might. (There are 15 new double-deckers expected to hit the road this year.)
But surely the fare levels matter somewhat when it comes to ridership. And certainly over the next few years when taking the bus will become less convenient as parts of the Transitway are shut down as part of the LRT construction, keeping fares down might just help hold on to riders.
Leiper, among others, wants to revisit the 55-per-cent policy. And Coun. Stephen Blais, who chairs the transit commission, also is open to discussing it, although he points out that the money has to come from somewhere — if not from fares, then higher taxes.
“It’s perverse to ask riders to pay so much of the cost when every taxpayer benefits,” says Leiper. “From the perspective of reducing congestion, forestalling expensive roadworks and benefits to the environment, it makes sense to put as few barriers to ridership as possible. In that light, yes, I’d like to talk about the policy.”
Of course, it would help if Canada had a national transportation strategy, like every other G8 country. Or if we returned to the days when the provincial government paid the operating costs for municipal transit.
But while we wait for those aspirations to become reality, the city could do more to support its purported goal of sustainability. For starters, where are the disincentives to driving — tolls? parking levies? After all, there appear to be plenty of disincentives to taking transit. If the city really wants to get people out of their cars and on to OC Transpo, then its policies need to be rebalanced.
jchianello@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/jchianello
查看原文...
Take OC Transpo fares. They are already among the highest in the country and are set to rise an average of 2.5 per cent if the city’s current draft budget is passed. That means a basic adult monthly pass would rise to $103. 25 (an annual increase of $30), compared to a comparable pass for $99 in Calgary, $82 in Montreal and $91 in Vancouver for a so-called “zone 1″ pass.
Are these fare increases, well, fair increases?
Depends how you look at it. Ottawa is a sprawling city — fourth largest in Canada by population, but far larger than Calgary, Montreal, Vancouver or the city of Toronto in geographic area. That means providing transit services for our spread-out population is expensive, especially with buses.
And while constructing rail-based transit is expensive (you may have heard something about the $2.1-billion we’re spending on a 12.5-kilometre light-rail system now under construction), subway and light-rail systems are cheaper to operate than buses. That may go a piece toward explaining why Calgary and Montreal’s fares are lower than Ottawa’s.
On the other hand, the draft budget released this week was supposed based on four pillars, including that Ottawa be a “sustainable city.” So do the OC Transpo fare increases encourage sustainability?
Not for everyone, argues Coun. Jeff Leiper.
Consider the cash fare. The city’s policy is to reward frequent use, so a single cash fare is, by design, not the most economical way to go. It’s $3.45, with a proposed increase of 10 cents for 2015. Yet it’s often the city’s poorest who use actual loose change to pay for bus ride, says Leiper.
“It strikes me that many of the biggest hikes are to the fare classes used by some of the most vulnerable users,” he says. “Cash fare increases are particularly worrisome. I’ll be asking staff to see how we can distribute some of the increases to other classes.”
While there may be some tinkering with the proposed fares during this year’s budget process, there likely won’t be many major changes to the fare structure. After all, even the most progressive members on council are cognizant that they were elected on a mandate to keep the tax increase at two per cent — or at least close to it.
But council should engage in a much larger discussion about the city’s policy that stipulates that transit fares account for 55 per cent of the system’s operating costs (excluding ParaTranspo). If the 2015 proposed increases are approved, for example, the new fares are expected to provide $187.2 million, or 53 per cent of operating costs.
That policy was set was back in 2005. If we’re now more determined to become a city where people get out of their cars and on to transit, it’s high time to revisit it.
There are many reasons why people decide to drive instead of take transit, and the fare is only one factor in a host of calculations that include cost (of gas, of parking) and convenience. (For low-income folks, transit isn’t a question of affordability calculations, it’s a question of necessity.)
So if during the frigid morning rush hour, you watch two or three packed buses pass you by in Orléans or Kanata, or a late bus makes you miss your connection, then a lower fare might not convince you to stick with transit. But more buses might. (There are 15 new double-deckers expected to hit the road this year.)
But surely the fare levels matter somewhat when it comes to ridership. And certainly over the next few years when taking the bus will become less convenient as parts of the Transitway are shut down as part of the LRT construction, keeping fares down might just help hold on to riders.
Leiper, among others, wants to revisit the 55-per-cent policy. And Coun. Stephen Blais, who chairs the transit commission, also is open to discussing it, although he points out that the money has to come from somewhere — if not from fares, then higher taxes.
“It’s perverse to ask riders to pay so much of the cost when every taxpayer benefits,” says Leiper. “From the perspective of reducing congestion, forestalling expensive roadworks and benefits to the environment, it makes sense to put as few barriers to ridership as possible. In that light, yes, I’d like to talk about the policy.”
Of course, it would help if Canada had a national transportation strategy, like every other G8 country. Or if we returned to the days when the provincial government paid the operating costs for municipal transit.
But while we wait for those aspirations to become reality, the city could do more to support its purported goal of sustainability. For starters, where are the disincentives to driving — tolls? parking levies? After all, there appear to be plenty of disincentives to taking transit. If the city really wants to get people out of their cars and on to OC Transpo, then its policies need to be rebalanced.
jchianello@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/jchianello
查看原文...
