The Ford government has unveiled the final details of its Toronto-area fare integration policy, promising it will launch before the end of the month.
On Monday, the province formally announced its One Fare program, which will come into effect on Feb. 26.
The program is set to integrate fare systems across the Greater Toronto Area and charge riders for just one transit trip, regardless of how many buses, subways or streetcars they take, including in different cities.
The government estimates it will save an average of $1,600 for transit riders and officials hope it will add nine million new journeys to the system every year.
“Right now the biggest issue is the affordability issue — the cost of living is increasing and our government is making life affordable in so many ways,” Vijay Thanigasalam, associate minister of transportation, told Global News.
Toronto joins fare integration
The launch of the One Fare program brings Toronto’s transit services in line with many already operating across GTA-905.
For years, local transit agencies outside of Toronto have had fare and passenger-sharing arrangements that allowed riders to pay a single fare to ride as many buses as they needed within a two-hour window.
Outside of Toronto, the cost of transferring between buses and GO transit routes was also reduced. From March 2022, local GTA-905 passengers and GO Transit riders using both modes of transport were charged only for their GO trip.
But while things got smoother in the GTA-905, a barrier around Toronto formed.
Anyone switching from a local 905 service onto the TTC was charged a full extra fare, while in 2020 the Progressive Conservatives ended a pilot that had eliminated double fares between GO Transit and Toronto transit, meaning riders had to pay separately for both.
The new fare integration announcement changes that, bringing Toronto in line with its neighbours and — as the title suggests — charging people only one fare when they tap.
The government said it hopes the change will increase ridership and convenience. Part of the aim is to maximize the use of planned subway projects, which will expand the TTC network into new parts of both Peel and York regions.
How fare integration will work
The province has said it will pay the money local transit agencies would otherwise lose through the elimination of the double fare.
For example, if someone gets onto a TTC bus after tapping onto a Mississauga MiWay route first, they won’t pay again to ride in Toronto. Instead, the province will send the money to the transit agency so it doesn’t make a loss.
“We are compensating (the) TTC for this fare,” Thanigasalam said.
“So every day Metrolinx is sending money back to TTC to compensate (them). Expert numbers show (the) One Fare program — under the leadership of Premier Ford — is going to boost ridership.”
Global News previously learned that internal government estimates drawn up as the One Fare policy was being planned suggest it will cost Queen’s Park between $100 and $150 million per year, depending on how many people end up using the program.
By comparison, other incentives to increase affordability for people in Ontario have cost billions of dollars.
A 2022 decision to scrap licence plate stickers was pegged at around $1 billion per year, while cuts to the provincial gas tax until June 2024 will cost nearly $2 billion.
Long-awaited plan
The launch of the province’s fare integration program comes after years of lobbying, particularly by the Toronto Board of Trade, which published a series of reports advocating for the change.
In early 2023, then-associate transportation minister Stan Cho announced the policy was coming and promised it would be in action by the end of 2023.
After a series of cabinet shuffles later through the summer and fall of 2023, the province revised its timing and said “early” in 2024 that the policy would launch.
Thanigasalam said the rollout of the program was a step-by-step process, beginning with changes in the GTA-905 in 2022, and would be worth waiting for in Toronto.
“We are bringing all the agencies to work with the TTC and Metrolinx as well,” he said.
“What this means is there is a scope (to) expand this to other regions. Our goal is to stand with commuters to make sure we make it affordable first — and then we move from there.”