More bus fare hikes

Councillors will decide on Monday whether to add another 15 cents to HSR fares. Staff are also proposing two new suburban bus routes and a pilot program to subsidize monthly passes for up to 809 low-income residents.

By CATCH, Last Updated Wednesday, November 28, 2007

(Originally published by Citizens at City Hall (CATCH) on November 22, 2007.)

Councillors will decide on Monday whether to add another 15 cents to HSR fares. Staff are also proposing two new suburban bus routes and a pilot program to subsidize monthly passes for up to 809 low-income residents.

The proposed fare increase appears in a report released today that will be debated by a special Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday afternoon. If approved it would likely be finalized at Wednesday's council meeting.

It calls for an $8 jump in adult monthly passes and a $7-a-month increase for school kids. Both passes went up by $6 a month in July making the climb about 20 percent for each of them in less than a year.

Ticket prices, including those for DARTS, would go up by 10 cents a ride. Cash fares climbed 15 cents in July to $2.25 and would now jump to $2.40 - a fourteen percent increase.

Unlike in previous fare hike reports from staff, no attempt is made to estimate how much transit ridership will decline because of the fare hikes. A November 2005 report proposing a similar 15 cent fare hike predicted that it would mean 590,000 fewer HSR riders.

In a surprising move, there is no change proposed in the cost of the annual seniors pass, despite a failed attempt last spring to add an extra $40 a year to their yearly fee. Seniors led the opposition to fare hikes proposed by staff for 2004, 2005 and 2007.

The July fare hikes were supposed to be accompanied by a program to help low-income residents continue to use the bus. A proposal in that direction was also unveiled today. It suggests spending $500,000 for a one-year pilot "affordable transit pass program" that would start in April. Up to $105,000 of the money would be spent on additional staff salaries.

The program would provide a 50 percent discount for up to 809 monthly HSR passes each month. Staff estimate that about 46,289 could be eligible for the program, and acknowledge that there would only be enough passes for 1.7 percent of these people.

If recipients are limited to the 25,015 classified in the report as working poor, then up to three percent might get the subsidy. The proposal offers councillors the opportunity to choose which categories of low-income people will be eligible.

Community services staff would "distribute, receive and approve applications" and those selected would only be able to pick up the passes as the HSR offices in the GO Station. The subsidy program only applies to monthly passes, not to single tickets or cash fares, so selected applicants would have to pay $39.50 a month instead of $79.

A third staff report calls for extending HSR service to Waterdown, and starting a Rymal Road route that would initially run between Glancaster Road in Ancaster and Carmen's Banquet Centre at Pritchard Road. Both routes would operate only during rush hour on weekdays.

Staff are also asking for approval in principle to extend the Rymal service in 2009 to Upper Centennial and then down that road to Eastgate Mall; and to start a new north-south route along Victoria and Wentworth streets in the lower city. The extended Rymal service would also be limited to weekday rush hours, while the Victoria-Wentworth route would also extend through the daytime hours between rush hours.

Several individuals have registered to speak to the committee on Monday afternoon. City rules allow residents to apply to speak to a committee if they apply by noon of the last business day before the meeting - in this case tomorrow.