[URBAN NOTE] "Is the TTC the priciest transit system in North America?"

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO's Larry Green reports that the TTC is actually one of the most costly transit systems in North America for users.

Montreal and Washington DC have similar rapid transit ridership, while Los Angeles near-identical bus numbers. Yet in the big picture, the greatest commonality between systems relates to fares. All cities have to charge a rider to get from point A to point B, and many grapple with funding sources, labour issues, service levels, local politics and other factors that would sound familiar to even the casual transit observer. After suffering three years of deep recession, even well-regarded American cities have been raising fares and slashing service. Everyone is the same unfortunate situation of having to pay too much for transit... or are they?

It's fairly common knowledge that the TTC gets more funding from the farebox (67%) than any other North American transit system, so one would suspect its fares are relatively high in relation to other cities, but oddly this argument rarely gets mentioned during council debates or most articles covering the topic of fare hikes.

It can be very difficult to peer over the edge of the putative centre of the universe, after all, even in the age of Google. Besides a willingness to acknowledge that other cities actually exist, many assumptions are required to undertake a comparative study of transit fares (see below), and any general comparison will surely skim over some pertinent details. But the question must still be asked — in the afterglow of the latest TTC fare hike, how does Toronto transit stack up when it comes to fares?

The answer turns out to be an "F," by almost any measure. Although riding the Rocket in Toronto was less expensive than, say, New York as recently as 1990, ever since, the TTC has sat on top of the fare heap. In three of the four most easily compared fare categories for major North American transit systems — the adult base fare, the adult discounted multi-trip fare, the senior reduced fare and adult monthly passes — the TTC comes up as the most costly ride. The sole exception is the adult base fare, where Toronto runs a close second to Ottawa (which says something about public transit funding in Ontario). When measured overall across the categories in question, the TTC is the most expensive single-fare integrated transit system in North America.

For multiple-use fares, interestingly, Canadian cities rank among the most expensive.