ttc fares are going up to $2.50 a ride next month, which upsets me thoroughly. if you use the ttc twice a day, five times a week, then how much more do you pay per year starting march 6th? roughly an extra $120.
oh, that doesn't sound like much to you, does it, mr. briefcase man? is that what you spend on paper and office supplies a day? an hour? a minute? does it ever occur to you that you're subjecting riders to an even faster rise in the cost of living?
oh, but you don't ride, of course! after all, if i were a ciy councillor responsible for a fare hike, i'd steer clear of the ttc to avoid some of the wrath that would certainly meet me every time i hear the click of the turnstyles or the dropping of tokens into the slot or the hiss of the automated doors opening and closing. (mind you, if i were a councillor who rode the ttc - perhaps there are some - i might be more inclined to oppose the hike.)
now, i'm all for things like user responsible services, and no problem with adding costs to them. i take no issue with putting a small price on grocery and garbage bags. but we can be responsible for the upkeep of those things. if we don't want t pay the price for a shopping bag, we get a bin and bring it to the store. if our garbage is too full, we work on minimizing waste in the future. but there are major problems with this fare hike from a populist perspective.
one of the biggest problems is not the cost, but who pays for it. we cannot possibly be made to think that we are wholly responsible for the upkeep of our transit system. aside from basic measures of considerate behaviour, like paying our fare or keeping the stations and vehicles clean and non-violent, we cannot be expected to do much else. we as citizens cannot fix a damaged track or operate a tcc vehicle. the ttc is a specialized service which requires specialized service people to keep it working. and that costs a lot of money, fine. many millions if not a billion to run that system every year, and that's ok with me. but it's rather painful to think that we, as riders have done little to degrade the quality of the system, yet we must bear the brunt of the cost to repair it. which brings me to...
2) the extra $120 a year this will cost us. save some office workers who ditch their expensive cars for "the rocket" (who do make up a good percentage of riders, admittedly), the ttc is for most riders a budgeted cost that must be met each day or week or month. another $120 a year means that parents, married and single alike, may not be able to afford some vital material with which to raise their children. some people may have to start waking places more often, like myself. i as a young healthy able-bodied person can handle that, but what about the middle aged? it's not fair that they might have to walk longer distances, in some cases up to an extra hour or two a day, no joke.
what can we do? boycott the ttc? protest? well, i guess by default many of us will be staging our own little mass walkout when we can't afford to ride everyday.
as far as advertant opposition, it's too late to stop this increase, but you can bet in another couple years, city council will raise the spectre of the dreaded fare. and when that time comes, we should tell tour loyal and dedicated public servants to take a salary cut instead.
