The TTC Board approved a 10-cent fare increase for 2017 at a special budget meeting, while endorsing a fare freeze for 2018 to keep transit fares in line with inflation, according to TTC meeting minutes.
The special meeting was held in Committee Room 2 at Toronto City Hall on Monday, November 21, 2016, beginning at 10:05 a.m. Chair Josh Colle presided, with the board's full membership and senior TTC executives in attendance, including Chief Executive Officer Andy Byford.
The board took up three items: the 2017 TTC and Wheel-Trans operating budgets, the 2017–2026 capital budget, and the Federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund. Byford delivered a presentation on the operating budgets, and the board heard a long list of deputations from members of the public, transit advocacy groups, and the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit.
Commissioner Joe Mihevc moved to defer any possible fare increase until after the city's budget meeting, and to submit a budget to the city's Budget Committee without a fare increase. That motion was defeated.
The board instead voted separately on each of the six recommendations in the staff report. A key amendment from Chair Colle endorsed a fare freeze for 2018 to balance with the $0.10 increase in 2017, and asked staff to report on the feasibility of harmonizing the TTC's adult pass discount programs, known as VIP and MDP, along with the budget implications.
The amended fare recommendation passed in a recorded vote of 8-2, with Commissioners Shelley Carroll and Mihevc opposed. A further motion from Mihevc directing staff to submit a 2018 operating budget with no fare increase was ruled redundant by the chair.
Other motions fared differently. Commissioner Vincent Crisanti's proposal that the board ask the Province of Ontario to assume the remaining $61-million shortfall in the TTC operating budget lost, as did his motions on a pilot project with special fare rates for low-income families and seniors. The chair ruled part of his motion on exempting senior fares redundant.
Several motions did carry. The board asked staff to report in the first quarter of 2017 on loading standards used to determine service, with recommendations to ease overcrowding, and requested a briefing note by the end of 2016 on fare increases over the previous 20 years compared to the consumer price index. A motion from Commissioner Alan Heisey was not among those; instead, motions from Commissioner Jennifer Byers, to begin budget deliberations each June, and from Carroll, to report total hours of service per mode, both carried.
On the capital budget, a motion from Commissioner Denzil Minnan-Wong carried, asking staff to report on deleting the TTC's 40 per cent Canadian content requirement in favour of the provincially mandated 25 per cent requirement for bus purchases.
The board also approved the TTC's list of priority capital projects for funding under the Federal Public Transit Infrastructure Fund, totalling $1.363 billion, and agreed to forward the report to City Council for approval.
