The TTC has cut services to specific routes and raised fare costs after Toronto passed in multi-billion dollar budget, raising concerns for safety and transit reliability.
The service cuts kicked in on March 26, causing longer wait times on 39 routes including two subway lines, a streetcar route, and 36 bus routes.
TTC released its 2023 operating budget in January, which revealed service cuts and a fare increase of 10 cents for adult and youth single fares.
Increases for single cash and pay-as-you-go PRESTO fares rolled in on April 3, 2023, now costing adults $3.35 and youth $2.40 to use TTC services. Customers paying with PRESTO cards save five cents on the new fares.
The service cuts and fare increases follow a loss in revenue the TTC incurred, due to low ridership during the pandemic, causing a budget shortfall of $366 million.
Riders using the Bloor-Danforth Line 2 subway will now have to wait up to eight minutes on weekday evenings, an increase from the previous five minute wait on platforms, Monica Mason said, coordinator of the TTC advocate group TTCriders.
The recent changes will cause frustration for staff and customers amidst the spike in violence.
“Especially as a woman myself, being alone on a platform, waiting eight minutes for a subway at night contributes to increased isolation and it can be a safety issue,” Mason said.
Cutting service leads to less staff on platforms and in trains. As TTC staff tend to be the first responders in emergencies, it creates an even more dangerous environment for riders and staff, she said.
The TTC stated on their website that a fare increase will help “ensure the system is reliable, safe and accessible,” however, Mason said that the changes will cause unreliable service that will drive riders away.
“People don’t want to pay more for less service,” she said.
“We’re losing riders to Uber and Lyft and a lot of ride sharing apps so when we lose riders we lose the revenue and that creates this vicious cycle where we really cut away at our existing public transit system.”
Alongside the city’s rising rent, food, and grocery prices, rising TTC fares becomes another burden for low income communities who heavily rely on transit.
“The fare increase is for single fares, not for the monthly pass, so people who are low income tend to use single fares more just because they don’t have the funds to pay up front for a monthly pass,” Mason said.
Last month, the TTC ended its police deployment initiative that was introduced after a recent string of violent crimes plagued the transit system.
Effective from late January to mid-March, the program resulted in 314 arrests and 220 referrals for individuals who required social assistance, the Toronto Police said in a news release on March 13, 2023.
Despite efforts to strengthen safety, violence indeed persists, with the city seeing another random attack on the TTC on March 25, 2023, when 16-year-old Gabriel Magalhaes was stabbed at Keele Station and died of his wounds.
“There is a bigger conversation around what’s happening to our public spaces – the TTC is just a public space,” Mason said.
“It’s a third space for people to be in and there’s fewer and fewer of those for people to stay in so we are not seeing enough funding and investment in the root causes of violence,” she said.