Christopher Hume says its time for Toronto to get angry, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

A few days ago, Toronto City Council voted to defer the decision on the controversal land transfer tax and vehicle registration fee. While this proposed tax, one of Toronto’s new taxing powers from the new City of Toronto Act, has made city residents understandably worked up. I have supported its implementation (with a few groans) because I feel that the city truly needs this to preserve and improve the very services that residents rightly demand.

When it comes down to it, provincial and federal governments have continued to neglect Toronto. Since my interest is in transit, I will just speak within that realm. The fact is, we have all heard time and time again that the TTC has the highest cost-recovery ratio in all other transit authorities in North America— where over 80% of all operating expenses are covered by farebox revenues. Due to the massive cuts made during the Harris regime, TTC has and continues to make due with less. If you recall back in 1996, the provincial cutbacks triggered massive cutbacks to service, labour, and plant and equipment. I came across the Service Changes for Februrary 1996 as a result of the massive cutbacks, and I strongly urge you take a look this page to fully grasp the severity of these service reductions during this dark period for Toronto transit.

TTC has come a long way since then and while it is amazing to see the surge of ridership (estimated 454 million in 2007) on the TTC system, we still have not reached the 463.5 million record in 1988. Think about it, during this time span, Toronto has grown by about 400,000 people, and the GTA grew about 1.7 million people, and only now has ridership reached close to 1988 levels. On another note, while our ridership will soon eclipse the previous 1988 record, TTC still continues to operate with much fewer buses, operators and maintenance staff.

Now we understand that perhaps drastic service cuts need to be made. Adam Giambrone stated that the closure of the Sheppard Subway, the elimination of 21 surface routes, and a 25-cent fare increase, may be necessary to balance the books.

While these proposed cuts are seen as “worst case scenario” and it is not likely that TTC would have to replicate the events in February 1996, I believe that some cuts are imminent. While we have heard so much exciting news recently related to GTA transit, I am extremely turned off that such service reductions have to take place— service reductions which are planned at time when we already experience massive overcrowding on our network.

This is desperate times for Toronto, and like Hume said, it’s time to get furious. It’s time for all of us to put pressure especially on the provincial government to either provide Toronto long-term funding for the social services— the very services were downloaded by provincial government for the city to provide— or to simply upload them back! Big cities naturally attracts, in greater proportions, social issues, like homelessness for instance, and it’s not fair that Toronto must solely address these issues. Homelessness is a provincial issue, requiring provincial support.

I went on a bit of a tangent, but to sum up, Toronto requires money if it wishes to maintain competitiveness and quality of life. On that note, let’s all be a little angrier and let our policians know, and let’s build a city to be admired for a change!

Emergency TTC Meeting re Budget Cuts - [stevemunro.ca]
TTC proposed fare hike, subway shutdown - [globeandmail.com]
Cuts, fare hikes menace TTC - [thestar.com]
No More Sheppard Subway??!! - [blogto.com]
Time for Toronto to get angry - [thestar.com]
Miller orders spending cuts - [thestar.com]